


Teleport Kids

by kenthel



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Dogs, F/F, F/M, Fencing, M/M, Pre-Apocalypse, Sci-fi Weirdness, Secret Society, SnK Minibang 2016, Teleportation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2018-08-14 01:57:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7994434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenthel/pseuds/kenthel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren Jaeger, a kid from rural upstate New York, has the ability to teleport. When he goes away for college, Eren discovers others have this mysterious power. With his friends, new and old, he endeavors to find out why he has this power.</p>
<p>Ymir is a member of the Sina Security Force of External Affairs. Her duty is to keep the knowledge of teleportation from the public with her partner, Christa, by her side. Turmoil within Sina changes the rules and Ymir has to make a decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eren Doesn't Mind the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my fic for the Snk Minibang. Hope you like it.
> 
> To llyai and karbinhake - Thank you so much for your patience and cooperation throughout this project. I truly love the art you've both created for this fic. Your positive comments when I shared the rough draft were very motivating. It was a pleasure working with you both. 
> 
> Links to their wonderful artwork will be included.  
> Here's one by karbinhake: http://karbinhake.tumblr.com/image/150367517170
> 
> Extra thanks to nevikhikeri for always listening.

Eren Jaeger was locked out. He stood outside his window and peered into the darkness of his room. His nose pressed into the screen. Inside his room, his forgotten cellphone sat on a desk that Eren was so unacquainted with, he did not feel comfortable referring to it as _his_. Beside the phone was his freshly printed university student ID card - his key into the building.

A fat drop of rain fell onto Eren’s hair. The moist summer evening air chilled around him and the hairs on his arms raised like static. Another cool drip landed on the back of his neck. The night sky churned with stormclouds. Flashes of cloud-to-cloud lightning reflected in the glass. 

A steady shower began. Rain seeped through the shoulders of his t-shirt and pulled his hair down onto his sticky forehead. Eren didn’t mind getting rained on. He closed his eyes.

Eren saw the structure of the building before him outlined on his eyelids in red. There was the sliver of metal screen before a half inch of glass in the window. A medusa lamp stood between two headboards of beds in varying states of undress. Matching desks and matching chairs sat in front of curtained closets. And, as Eren hunched his shoulders and crushed his eyelids together, he glimpsed through the hollow door into the corridor. All glowed like hot coals a breath away from flames. 

Eren exhaled. Emptied his lungs.

And disappeared.

Eren rematerialized in the center of his room. The rain had stopped soaking him. A swiveling fan sparked a patch of gooseflesh to emerge on his damp arms. His teeth chattered and his toes numbed over.

Eren breathed in the residual scent of Easy-Mac from the microwave and his roommate’s collection of contraband incense. He sloughed off his backpack, tossed it onto his bed, and stomped over to his desk to check his phone. His feet protested in a wave of burning pins and needles. Eren collapsed into the wooden chair in front of the desk and kicked off his shoes. The light from his phone was too bright.

No new messages. Bummer.

The lock in the door clicked open.

Eren didn’t even have time to act surprised before the door swung inward and banged loudly against the shoddy metal towel rack. The lights came on and the wet slap of flip flops carried his roommate inside.

Armin Arlert, the roommate, wandered in and fixed Eren with a scrunched look of preposterous confusion. He stood and stared hard with his thin striped towel around his waist. His shower tote dangled from his wrist and his lime green dollar store shoes squelched under his shifting weight.

Eren blushed and looked away.

“How did you get in here?” Armin asked. Armin clearly recalled seeing both the ID card and cellphone on Eren’s desk before hopping in the shower. He blinked several times as his mind scoured over the facts.

“I climbed in through the window,” Eren answered. He kept his eyes on his desk. His laptop was closed and his cellphone screen was dark. 

“Really, now,” Armin deadpanned. So, Eren was going to be one of _those_ roommates. Armin held back a sigh.

“I didn’t think you’d be back so soon and it was raining,” Eren explained further. Dashes of truth breathed life into stories, after all.

“Yeah, I understand,” Armin replied. He fished a clean pair of boxers from the dresser in his closet and slipped them on under his towel. Once covered, he unwrapped the towel and tucked it into the rack.

Eren glanced over. Armin’s chin-length blond hair was dripping onto his back.

“Isn’t this dorm co-ed?” Eren asked.

“Residence hall,” Armin corrected absently. He pulled a t-shirt on over his head. The gray darkened where it pressed against lingering wetness. “Yeah, it’s co-ed, why?”

Eren shrugged. “You’re not shy?”

“Not anymore,” Armin said. He stepped into a pair of jeans and hoisted them up over his hips with a series of mini-jumps before cinching his belt. “You get used to it.” Armin paused and reconsidered. “Or you don’t. I still see seniors strolling out of the showers fully clothed.”

“I see,” Eren replied. He distracted himself by rocking his chair back and forth and the front legs tapped against the floor. Eren didn’t want to openly massage the lingering static from his feet in front of a stranger.

Armin squeezed a clear liquid into the palm of his hand and finger combed it through his hair. He didn’t need the rain and humidity frizzing his hair out.

“I’m going to blow dry my hair. Can you open the window for me?” Armin requested. “Don’t want to turn this room into a sauna.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Eren complied. A chill crept down his spine. A sauna sounded kind of nice.

Eren swung the window’s lock open. He tucked his fingers into the handles. His knuckles grazed the smooth windowsill. His forearms quaked with exertion as he tried to force the window up. Eren clenched his teeth and a bead of sweat leaked down from his underarm.

Armin’s collection of wired devices rose, tangled to shit, from his drawer. He unwound the hair straightener, hair dryer, and charging stand for his electric toothbrush with uncaring yanks of the cords. He freed the blow dryer first and its large square plug clattered against the floor.

Before Armin had a chance to plug the dryer into the power strip, his phone buzzed to life with an incoming call. He listened to the call and sighed like it was his dying breath.

_”You’ve gotta come, man. We’re starting in ten.”_

“I’ve already showered,” Armin tried as an excuse.

_“We’re not gonna be going hard today. Just a pre-season meeting, but bring your gear.”_

“Fine,” Armin said. He ended the call.

Eren couldn’t open the window. If it was this cryptic, there should have been a three hour seminar on Opening Windows to Prove Your Lie to Your Roommate instead of the history of the university. He frantically groped along the sides and triple checked that the lock was open. 

A pale hand reached upward under the drawn up plastic shades. The generic chemical fakeness of Men’s 3-in-1 shower goop tickled Eren’s nose.

Armin stood on the very tips of his toes to reach the second lock on the upper window. He found this embarrassing normally, but, in this case, it was glorious. He dragged his palm down across the glass and the friction slid the window open.

“The handles are a red herring. Only the top window opens,” Armin said slyly, "but you knew that."

Eren burned. “Right.”

Armin laughed. “Thanks anyway. I’ve actually got to go to a meeting. Catch you later.”

Armin ducked underneath his bed, dragged out a huge sports bag, slipped on a different pair of flip flops, and left the room.

Eren stood, stunned silent in shame. He jolted as the door slammed shut.


	2. Gluttony and the Green-Eyed Guy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa eats a doughnut. People interrupt.

Mikasa Ackerman bit into a chocolate frosted yellow-cake doughnut with rainbow sprinkles and groaned in ecstasy. Her eyes slipped closed and she raised a steaming cardboard cup of fluffy cappuccino flecked with rich cinnamon to her lips. The doughnut eased its way down her throat with the help of immaculately prepared foamed whole milk and fairly traded dark espresso. 

Heaven was a coffee shop and Mikasa had one within walking distance. No force on this Earth would make her go back home to the old man on the mountain with his instant coffee and 2-for-$5 packs of Thomas’ corn cakes.

No! Mikasa banished the thought before the smoothness on her tongue gave way to memories of half burned ground corn.

She took another bite, slow and languid and savoring.

Mikasa let her cup linger tantalizingly under her nose to breathe in the cinnamon before her next gulp. She was untouched by stress, morphine-drip serene, and prepared to be swallowed whole by an ocean of tranquility. 

There was a knock at the door.

Mikasa looked from her doughnut to the door and considered.

Another series of knocks came, louder this time.

She set down her cup and doughnut on the biodegradable brown napkin. She cracked her knuckles, then her neck, and practiced her deep breathing.

The door handle rattled and someone hissed a curse. They pounded on the door with the flat of their palm.

In through the nose, out through the mouth. Ten breaths, ten counts, Mikasa thought.

“Mikasa! I know you’re in there. Come on,” Eren called through the door. He leaned his forehead against the door and put his hands in his pockets.

Mikasa leapt to her feet and yanked the door open. Eren fell into her shoulder.

“Eren, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he muttered.

Mikasa stroked Eren’s hair.

A pair of men approached from down the hall, laughing at a shared joke. They passed by Mikasa’s open doorway. One snorted in laughter. His name was Jean Kirschtein. He walked with a sneer and a swagger on long, strong legs. The other was Marco Bodt. Marco stood eye-to-eye with Jean and took twice as many steps to keep up. Marco had freckles, sunburn, and tan lines. They each had a black sports bag slung over a shoulder.

“At least close the door first. Jesus,” Jean said. He nudged Marco without breaking stride as if to say, ‘right, man?’ Marco only smiled and shook his head.

Eren sprang off of Mikasa’s shoulder. A wave of static raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He pointed at Jean.

“What did you just say?” Eren demanded.

“Eren,” Mikasa warned.

The duo stopped. Marco hid his face. 

Jean put a hand on his hip. “I said, ‘at least close the door first,’” he repeated.

“Jean,” Marco pleaded, revealing his huge brown eyes, “We’re going to be late for practice.”

Eren barked over him. “You oughta mind your own goddamn business.”

Jean glared and chewed the inside of his cheek. He said, “You are way too uptight.”

“Jean?” Marco insisted, “Practice?”

Eren stuffed his hands in his pockets, but didn’t drop his gaze.

Jean relented and rolled his shoulders. His tall bag rattled. He turned on his heel with a huff and briskly walked away. He complained, aside to Marco, “Who the fuck has practice before the first day of classes anyway?”

“. . . You’re the captain, man,” Marco reminded.

Jean and Marco turned the corner into the stairwell.

The hallway was empty. Showers ran in the communal bathroom. Thrumming bass music hummed from behind a door plastered with photos of its occupants and friends. Someone practiced the English horn solo from Dvorak’s Symphony No 9. “From the New World” on a steady, melancholic loop. A faint stench of marijuana smoke lingered in the corners of the building like the passive scent of home after time away.

Mikasa clapped her hand on Eren’s shoulder. Even when jars of instant coffee gave way to Starbucks, some things never changed. She squeezed him and his muscles loosened under her grip. His shirt was damp. 

Eren looked at her. His nose and cheekbones were flushed. His eyes, glistening and pink with tears, ensnared Mikasa’s heart. He sniffed loudly, gross and wet, and brushed by her into the room.

“Why are you crying, Eren?” Mikasa asked gently.

“Huh?” Eren said. He brought his fingertips up to his eyes and blinked away the gathered tears.

Eren had a lot on his mind. He’d met more people in four days of first year orientation than he had in his entire existence. He was crammed into a two-bed shoebox with a too-clever roommate. Mina, his father’s housekeeper, kept texting him to ask if he’d eaten with the fool-proof prepaid flip phone she bought the day Eren left. The roads no longer reeked like acres of corn or piles of manure. 

The bed opposite Mikasa’s was naked and the tag stitched to the mattress was curled and wrinkled. There was one dark spot of mystery stain the size of a quarter. The wall was pale and speckled with little humps and inconsistencies. The RA had told Mikasa she would have a roommate. Eren had told his roommate he climbed through a window. And Eren was convinced that Armin’s blue eyes had darted to him with suspicion. 

Mikasa closed the door and brushed her hair out of her eyes. She hesitated to hold Eren, who looked so lost when only moments ago he had burned so savagely. She did anyway.

“I think Armin suspects something,” Eren breathed into Mikasa’s hair. 

“After all these years, you think Armin found out in less than a day?” Mikasa asked. She’d become tense, but her voice remained calm and even.

“I know it’s crazy,” Eren said. He took a step back and tapped the side of his head. “I think he at least has an idea.” 

Mikasa shrugged and returned to her desk. She stuffed the remaining half of doughnut into her face. Chocolate smeared into the corners of her lips and she chewed with her mouth ajar. Her teeth tingled from the sweetness. She swallowed half of the masticated mass.

“Then, we’ll work something out,” Mikasa concluded.

Eren gaped. “Since when do you eat doughnuts?”

Mikasa drained her cappuccino and lapped at the excess foam with her tongue. “Since now.”

Eren hopped onto her bed and fixed her with his prized pout. “You didn’t get one for me?”

Some soft, buttery part of Mikasa’s heart wept for an instant. His manipulative green eyes twinged with faux pain, framed with real redness from crying. How could she resist?

Easily.

“Nope,” Mikasa replied.

“You never go easy on me.” Eren smiled.

“That’s right.” Mikasa licked her lips clean and smiled too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my google doc wanted to autocorrect "'jean?' marco . . ." to jeanmarco. it made me laugh every time I went through this chapter for edits.


	3. That Kid Is Back in My House Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback to Eren's childhood when he meets Mikasa's uncle, Levi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the entire story takes place in new york state. there is a startling amount of nowhere. though I have to say, it's very beautiful here in nowhere.

Chapter 3: That Kid Is Back in My House Again

Levi Ackerman shuffled out across his walkway to get the morning paper from his post box. He was tailed on both sides by golden retrievers. One was red and one was blond. They were named Isabel and Farlan, respectively. A lit cigarette left a serpentine trail of smoke in Levi's wake. Unruly buds of dandelions burst up between the bricks of the path. Levi glared at them.

“Fuckers,” Levi said.

There was a fresh jug of weed killer in the garage, Levi knew. Weeds always thought they were sneaky.

The road, old Hoose, was dirt and gravel. When a divot in the road became a nuisance for the county, they sent by guys to dump more dirt and gravel into the holes.

A decent cavern had formed right at the end of Levi’s walkway. It was filled with yesterday’s brown rainwater and dark, boot-sucking mud. Levi stepped around it with a snort of disgust. The Otsego county office would be getting another call.

His dogs sat when Levi came to a halt. He ordered them to stay. They stayed. Levi shielded his eyes from the breaking dawn with the hand holding his cigarette and looked both ways. 

“What the fuck,” Levi whispered mildly. He squinted at an approaching silhouette of a small person. A child. Jesus, it wasn’t even 6:30 yet. He took a drag off his cigarette and shook his head. Not my kid, not my problem, he thought.

The people who brought his paper hadn’t even bothered to close his mailbox. The pages caught in the wind. Levi tucked his cigarette between his lips and rolled it over to a corner. He extracted the paper and inspected the mailbox for unsolicited advertisements and bullshit. Satisfied with the lack thereof, Levi turned on his heel and checked the street again.

The kid was about a hundred feet away. Levi could see the green of his eyes. The kid froze comically in place, one foot up and hands mid-swing.

“The road ain’t the place for Red Light, Green Light,” Levi said. He shook his head again and returned to his side of the street.

Isabel and Farlan watched the kid with rapt attention. Farlan growled and Isabel panted, undeterred.

“What’s the matter, boy?” Levi asked.

Farlan jumped to his feet and started barking. The tags on his collar jingled with the ferocity of his bark. Isabel joined him in making noise. Isabel bounced from paw to paw and wagged her tail.

Levi followed Farlan’s gaze. Cool mud splashed against Levi's bare calves and the white crew socks sticking out of his slippers.

Isabel and Farlan raised their hackles and dripped slobber onto the walkway. White teeth were bared and snapping.

Behind Levi, standing ankle deep in the rippling puddle, was the kid. His mouth flapped like a fish in air.

“I’m sorry, mister,” Eren said. He hadn’t seen the puddle there when he had jumped. The dogs looked mean and he looked even meaner. People who smoked were often the unsavory sort - take Cruella deVille, for example.

Levi grit his teeth. “Just watch where you’re going next time, kid.” That’s what he said, but what he was really thinking was, how on Earth had he covered 100 ft in the time it’d taken me to cross 10?

The dogs were still going ballistic. They toed the property line and waited for the signal. Levi shushed them and lowered one hand. The dogs quieted immediately.

“Let’s go be good inside dogs, okay?” Levi asked Isabel and Farlan.

They calmed and wagged their tails. Farlan continued to give Eren the side-eye and one ear quirk, but obeyed.

“Um, wait, sir,” Eren requested.

“Yeah?” Levi asked over his shoulder. Ash fell from his cigarette and he sighed at the gray, fragile lump on his walkway.

“Is this 104 old Hoose?”

“Yeah?” Levi repeated impatiently.

Eren looked past Levi to the two-story home with the black, gently sloped roof. Flower baskets with beautiful blooms hung in the first story windows. There was a three bay, two-story garage that looked more like a barn. The lawn was thick and green with the occasional patch of unmowed purple wild flowers.

“Does that mean Mikasa lives here?” Eren asked at last. Mikasa was his best friend from kindergarten class. She was quiet and kind and totally pretty. 

Isabel let out a low whine at the sound of Mikasa’s name. Mikasa, Levi’s young niece, had moved in with him before the beginning of the school year. He was convinced that she hated him and she never told him anything.

“You’re one of Mikasa’s friends?” Levi asked.

Eren beamed. He held excited little fists up and he spoke enthusiastically. “Yeah! Mikasa’s my best friend in the whole world. And we promised that we’d hang out every day of summer vacation and she told me her address and we made a pinky promise and do you know where she is?”

Levi blinked. “That sounds excessive.”

“Huh?” Eren asked. He frowned. He had just found her house and his shoes had already gotten soaked through. He squelched his toes in his sopped light-up Power Rangers sneakers.

“Oh, nothing. Everyday, was it?” Levi said.

“Yes, everyday. We _promised_ ,” Eren emphasized.

Levi reached into his shorts pocket for his portable ashtray and stuffed the remainder of the cigarette inside. He offered his freed hand for a shake.

“Name’s Levi. I’m Mikasa’s uncle-”

Eren pointed at him and exclaimed, “I knew you weren’t her dad!”

Levi stiffened and his blood pressure spiked. It’s just a stupid kid, he reminded himself. He doesn’t know anything. He sighed and snatched up the kid’s hand for an awkward, quick shake. 

“Eren!” Eren piped. “Eren Jaeger.”

“Yeah, yeah. Nice to meet you too, kid,” Levi grumbled. “How old are you?”

“I’m 6,” Eren proclaimed. “For my birthday, my dad was there for cake. Chocolate cake. And there was seven candles, for good luck, you know.”

“Right,” Levi agreed. He motioned for Eren to follow him.

Eren did and kept on talking at as fast as his little pink lips could go. Occasionally he spit out half formed words of nonsense to Levi, who would just nod.

Isabel and Farlan took interest in Eren. They pressed their wet noses against his t-shirt and Farlan licked at Eren’s face with an unpleasant amount of pungent slobber. Eren giggled and groped at Farlan’s ears with his fingers.

At the door, Levi told Eren to leave his shoes and socks on the stoop and step into the kid’s sized house slippers Levi placed in the entranceway. Levi stripped his socks and donned his own house slippers. He tucked the scuffed outdoor pair into the shoe rack. 

“Make yourself at home, Eren. Mikasa isn’t up yet, but you’re welcome to stay until then,” Levi explained.

Eren smiled, all wide with a missing tooth and another hanging on by a thread. “Okay!”

Levi went to the phone in the kitchen, slid open the drawer beneath it, and found the phone book. He leafed through to the whitepages and found the listing under Jaeger.

Jaeger, Grisha MD  
Bassett Healthcare Cooprstwn……...547-XXXX  
1001 Pine Blvd Cooprstwn…………..264-XXXX

Cooperstown was twenty miles away. Levi’s anxiety pulsed steadily in his chest. He dialed the numbers and tried to stop his brain from doing the math.

It was answered by a women on the second ring. “Jaeger residence."

“Yeah, hello,” Levi said, “Is Grisha Jaeger there?”

“May I ask who is speaking?” she asked.

“This is Levi.” He heard too much quiet in the house for two six year olds and two dogs. He looped around and tangled himself in the spiraling cord.

Little Eren sat with the refrigerator door open, rifling through the drawer of deli meats.

Isabel and Farlan were behind Eren sitting as primly as possible. Farlan drooled shamelessly from both sides of his mouth and Isabel had her eyebrows and ears poised cutely. Full-on beg status.

Eren was oblivious. Levi felt a dribble of a headache in his left temple.

“Levi who?” the lady on the phone asked.

“Levi Ackerman,” he supplied. He needed another cigarette. This is for Mikasa, he thought. For the brownie points. The kudos.

She concealed the phone receiver with her palm. “Dr. Jaeger, there is a Mr. Levi Ackerman on the phone for you,” she explained faintly. 

‘Dr. Jaeger, huh?’ Levi thought. He watched Eren take out a slice of turkey from the fresh pound and stuff in entire piece in his face.

Farlan whined pathetically. Eren turned around and asked, “You want some, puppy?”

Levi stepped forward and heard the phone skid across the counter to the edge. “No,” he told his dogs sternly. He pointed towards the living room. “Go to bed.”

Isabel and Farlan fled with their tails down and their faces guilty.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” the lady on the phone said.

“Oh God, shit, not you. I’m sorry. I was talking to my dogs,” Levi explained, feeling ready to die. He hated phones.

“As I was saying, Dr. Jaeger has requested that I relay to you that he does not accept calls before 9 AM. If this is an emergency, please call 911. Have a nice da-”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I’m not a patient or anything. His kid showed up at my house and I wanted to make sure he was aware.”

The woman started the describe the updated situation.

Eren hummed a variation of “America the Beautiful” loudly and leaned against the closed refrigerator doors.

“What?” Dr. Jaeger yelled. “Give me the phone and go check his room. I said-” There was a sound of movement and clothes swishing. “- check his room. Now, thank you.” Dr. Jaeger took a breath. “Hello? What’s this about Eren? Who are you? Is he okay?”

“Right, hello,” Levi said. He told Dr. Jaeger what happened.

“I do remember him mentioning Mikasa,” Dr. Jaeger said, calmer. He sighed into the receiver. “And you said you live in Roseboom? That’s a twenty minute drive. I’m sorry about this, Mr. Ackerman. I don’t know how he got there.”

“It’s not a problem. Any friend of Mikasa’s is welcome anytime. I was just worried about Eren is all.”

Eren scoped out the insides of every drawer and cabinet his grabby hands could reach. His humming became high-pitched singing. “O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber fields of grain. . .”

Waves of grain, Levi thought. 

“I’ll be sure to give him a stern talking to when he comes home.” Dr. Jaeger was shuffling through paperwork and checking out of the conversation. “A car will be sent by to retrieve Eren at 5 o’clock. Have a pleasant day, Mr. Ackerman.”

The dial tone rang in Levi’s ear. He twirled to remove the cord from his person and hung up the phone with a resigned sigh. What an asshole. Didn’t give a shit about his kid. Levi needed coffee. He removed a battered pot from the cabinet beside the stove and put water up to boil.

“America, America God sent His grace on thee-” Eren sang. He’d found a rock-hard collection of Granny Smith apples in a sack on the counter. He polished one of his t-shirt. He hummed and stumbled through the next line of the song and ended confidently. “-from sea to shining sea.”

The coming tartness of the apple made Eren’s mouth water in anticipation. When it came to apples, the bright green ones were certainly his least favorite. However, on Eren’s internal spectrum of fruits and vegetables, it ranked much higher than the leafy greens in Levi’s vegetable crisper. The apple shined in the light and Eren swallowed his excess spit.

Levi leaned against the countertop and watched Eren’s face contort in preparation for his stolen snack. “You hungry?”

“Starving,” Eren confirmed. He pressed an exaggerating hand against his mildly uncomfortable stomach.

“Give me that.” Levi pointed at the apple. Eren tossed it over with a crooked underhand and Levi snatched it from the air. He jerked his head in no particular direction. “Take a load off. I’ll make some nice pablum for you.”

Eren climbed up into a tall chair at the breakfast bar. “What’s pablum?”

There was a tall container of plain Quaker oatmeal beside the jar of instant coffee mix. Levi took both and rummaged through a rotating spice rack from cinnamon.

“It’s good, kid,” Levi answered. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Alright.” 

Eren swung his stubby legs and kicked with the toes of his slippers against the legs of the neighboring chair. He started up a new song to the beat of his kicks. It was an upbeat rendition of “God Bless the USA” with intensely improvised lyrics. Eren liked these songs the most because he learned them at school with Mikasa. They were the tallest of the AM kindergarten class so they got to stand next to each other during music lessons.

Levi peeled and sliced the apple. Every original spin of Eren’s on the song turned the knife on Levi’s patience Only ten more hours of this. Only one more verse in the song. Only two more minutes until the water boils and he gets both coffee and a means to politely silence the kid.

Questions still itched at the back of Levi’s mind.

 

Isabel and Farlan moved and their long claws clicked against the hardwood floor. They yipped happily and their tails wagged into walls and end tables. They knew better than to leave the corner of the living room designated as “bed.” In their excitement, they pushed their old ragged comforter up into a heap against the wall.

Mikasa slowly stepped down the spiral staircase. The staircase itself was black iron. The handrail was a special-order winding piece of cherry. The steps were covered with plush pink carpeting. Each step left an imprint of Mikasa’s bare foot. She was already a size two, she’d have you know, so her feet were not little. Her slippers waited at the foot of the stairs.

She took a short detour on her way to the kitchen. The thought of forcing down more of Levi’s swill for breakfast curbed her appetite. Mikasa walked over to the dogs’ bed. Isabel and Farlan fought to cover her round, giggling face in love and doggy spit fastest.

“Good puppies,” Mikasa cooed.

Farlan caught her with a lick against her open mouth.

Mikasa squealed and wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her flannel pajamas. She patted each dog in turn, bid them a good day of being good doggies, and reluctantly plodded into the kitchen.

The door opened and the insipid scent of soaking plain oatmeal filled Mikasa’s nostrils. Then, the tin-eared singing of her best friend reached her ears. 

The singing cut off with a heartfelt cry.

“Mikasa!”

“Eren!” Mikasa shouted back.

Levi glanced up from his coffee to see Eren drop a spoonful of oatmeal against the breakfast bar, a smear of tan with a dark swirl of cinnamon and a sliver of green apple. Eren hopped off his chair and threw himself into Mikasa’s arms like she’d just returned home from the war.

Mikasa, with her mismatched pajamas and impressive rats’ nest of bedhead, clung to Eren for dear life. She shifted her arms around his middle, hoisted him up, and spun him in a circle. Eren laughed so hard he snorted.

Levi had never seen Mikasa look so happy.

Shit, he thought, this kid should just move in.

Mikasa and Eren parted and the inevitable happened. Mikasa looked over at Levi and she swallowed her smile. Her eyes frosted over and she crossed her arms over her chest.

“There any more of that pabby-lum left for Mikasa?” Eren asked.

“Morning, Mikasa,” Levi tried. He straightened his back and offered a thin lipped smile.

“Morning, Levi,” Mikasa answered.

Levi had long since accepted that she was never going to call him “Uncle Levi.”


	4. The Fencing Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small close-knit club has some drama.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's some brief non-explicit sexual content in this chapter, though I almost feel like the phrase "non-explicit sexual content" is more nsfw than what's written here. almost.

“Armin," Jean greeted, "glad you decided to grace us with your presence."

Armin dropped his fencing bag to the ground with a huff. His hair dripped from his shower and the rain. He unzipped his bag to get a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt.

Jean wasn’t one to stand by and allow himself to be ignored like that. He shoved Armin playfully in the arm, then feigned a hiss of pain. “Ah! Shoulder too cold, man.”

Marco laughed.

Armin fought a scowl. He didn't like it when Marco found Jean's terrible jokes funny.

The Fencing Club was one of the oldest clubs on campus. It deserved an award for successfully staving off dissolution since its creation. It met in a large rectangular meeting room on the 4th floor of the Student Union Building (SUB, for short). The first ten minutes of their timeslot were dedicated to stacking cushioned chairs against the walls and sliding huge desks out of the way in pairs. The room had a constant afterodor of unclean college student BO that couldn’t always be Fencing Club’s fault, but the Knitting and Crochet Club that met after them thought otherwise.

The room was awfully large and quiet with only Jean, Marco, and Armin inside. Music leaked into the room from the hallway as each member of Fencing Club changed his clothes.

“Looks like we’ve got Jam Asia next door again,” Marco observed.

“Yeah,” Jean and Armin replied in unison.

Armin kicked off his jeans with disappointment and disgust. The mildly air conditioned air chilled his damp legs. The nylon shorts were cool and wonderful.

Jean and Marco, in shorts and beat up university sweats, respectively, and sat down on the carpet. They stretched absently. Armin joined them.

“So, this is it, then?” Marco asked. Marco was way too talkative for a man resting his face into his knees while grabbing his feet.

Jean got red in the face while he stretched like the action replaced breathing as a priority. He gasped. “Connie and Sasha’ll be coming any minute now.”

“Don’t think so,” Armin said. “Connie dropped out.”

“What, why?” Marco asked.

Armin didn’t know.

“What about Sasha?” Jean pressed.

Marco had pieced this one together already. “They were kind of a match set.”

“Oh.” Jean pulled out of his stretch early and laid flat on his back.

They moved mechanically into the brief physical warm-up: push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, and a two minute wall sit that produced tears by the end of it.

People cheered over the music next door. Pizza smell teased their noses. Jean did a handstand against an open bit of wall and attempted a slow push-up, face flushed like wine. Marco enjoyed the show. Armin pretended not to notice.

“Is Erwin coming today?” Armin asked.

Jean flopped off the wall with all the grace of a beached whale and Marco caught his legs to bring him to the ground.

“I let him know we were meeting, but you know how he is,” Jean replied.

“Life of a professional assassin must be tough,” Marco added.

“He’s a librarian,” Armin corrected, exasperated.

“With two kinds of black belts, expertise in eight different weapons, fluency in five languages, and the affluence to teach a prissy-ass rich kids’ sport like fencing for free?” Jean argued.

Armin rolled his eyes. “We’re not all prissy-ass rich kids like you, Jeanbo.”

“You totally neglected the rest of my point.”

The three suited up in their gloves and jackets. It was time for the team captain to divide them into tasks by weapon. Marco nudged Jean.

“Oh shit right,” Jean remembered. “I’m captain now.”

Marco pulled his saber from its PVC pipe scabbard and shook his head, smiling. Armin rotated the tip of his épée around in tight, precise circles, clockwise, counterclockwise, careful not to over-rotate or make the radius too wide. Jean looked at his tiny team and swallowed, trying to recall exactly what they would say last year. Jean’s saber was tucked underneath his arm.

“Shit,” Jean said again.

Armin stopped his circles. “What is it?”

Jean facepalmed. “You’re a different weapon.”

A thick moment passed as the information sunk in.

“Walking, lunging, and precision drills for me,” Armin decided with a sigh.

Jean clapped his hands. "Well, it's decided then. Marco, you're with me." He went over to his bag to find his practice mask.

Marco placed a hand on Armin’s shoulder. "My condolences."

Armin peeled the hand off him, winked at Marco, and pressed a silent, dry kiss on his fingers. Marco yanked his hand away and checked to make sure that Jean hadn't seen. The sunburn healing on his cheeks darkened.

 

Club ended. The three of them packed up the room and their stuff and cleared out before the ladies and gentlemen with the needles got on their cases. They went down a flight of stairs and around the corner to the Fencing Club room (the closet, for short). The door was decorated with old recruitment posters, introductions to the weapons, and a group picture of the team right after Armin had joined.

Jean had the key.

The inside had been straightened up before everyone had gone home for summer break. To the left, there was a rack of loaner jackets in most sizes. Above that was a shelf of twelve spare fencing masks, mostly up to snuff, but all had seen better days. To the right, there was a wooden rack of spare weapons. There were righties and lefties, french and pistol grips. Some were brown with a fine layer of rust. The room was an eight by eight box of spare gear none of them needed, but were suddenly responsible for.

Jean sat down on the grimy floor and took out a checklist from his bag. It was customary to take inventory of the closet’s contents after breaks. The distrustfulness turned Jean off.

“Marco and I got this,” Armin said. He snatched the list away. “You wanted to tell Erwin about the situation anyway, right?”

Armin ignored the wrinkle forming on Marco’s forehead.

“You sure?” Jean checked with Marco.

Marco turned and started to take the masks down from their shelves. “It’s fine, go ahead. Tell Erwin ‘hi’ for me.”

Jean tossed Armin the key. “Alright then, catch you later.”

The door closed.

Armin breathed a deep sigh of relief. He wrapped his arms around Marco from behind and rested his forehead on his back.

“I missed you.”

Marco dropped the mask in his hands and turned in Armin’s grasp. Marco worked his palms down Armin’s sides to the curve of his ass. Armin jumped, wrapped his legs around Marco, and crossed them at the ankles. 

Marco caught him easily and walked them over to prop Armin up against the door. “Didn’t I mention I was sore?” 

“You may have.” Armin laughed breathily in Marco’s ear and nipped at the side of his neck.

“Marco.”

Marco’s eyelashes touched his brow. Freckles were scattered across his eyelids. Marco had dark nose hairs and thin, colorless lips. There was a white scar on his forehead that he never talked about. His face smelled like cucumber moisturizer even after two hours of wearing a mask. Armin liked it all.

“Marco, kiss me.”

Armin was lost in lips, tongue, teeth and remnants of Big Red chewing gum. His feet returned to the ground at some point, but it was Marco holding him up, breathing his air, and pumping his blood.

A tongue found its way, wet and noisy, into Armin’s ear. Armin pressed his thumbs inside the elastic of Marco’s gym shorts. Armin teased the coarse dark hairs with his fingertips. Spit cooled on his throat. A low hum rumbled in his chest.

“Armin, can I . . .?” Marco tugged at Armin’s shorts.

Armin shifted away from the door. “Yeah.”

Marco folded the removed shorts and underwear and tucked them under his knees. Armin held the hem of his t-shirt in his mouth and his hands in Marco’s hair.

Marco had no time for play - he used every moist inch before his uvula and each hand in slick synchronization. The t-shirt fell from Armin’s lips in an unexpected gasp. He clamped down on the damp hairs on the back of Marco’s head.

“Shit, Marco,” he hissed, “Stop, I’m not gonna last-”

Marco pulled away and fluttered his eyelashes up at Armin. “Stop?”

Armin’s toes curled furiously inside his overheated sneakers. “Please don’t.”

There was no shame left to kept Armin’s jaw closed or his lips over his teeth. The back of his head hit the door and sweat dripped from his quivering thighs.

It certainly had been a long, dry summer. Armin relaxed against the door, boneless. He caught the beautiful, familiar sight of Marco wiping his reddened mouth.

A voice called through the door. “Hello? Anyone in there?”

Panic. Marco bounced to his feet. Armin pulled up his shorts up over his shoes and fell into the small pile of masks, scattering them.

Marco cracked open the door. “What’s up?”

It was a member of the SUB staff, counting heads. “Two in here?” She looked past Marco and took in Armin’s position with indifference.

Armin waved weakly.

“That’s right,” Marco said. He smiled convincingly. “Just doing some pre-season inventory.”

The woman nodded along, closed the door, and moved on to bother other people.

Armin laid in the mess and wished he could drown in fencing masks. 

“Do you think she heard?” Marco asked.

“I don’t know. God, maybe.”

“She didn’t seem to care.”

Armin cleared a spot on the floor for Marco like he was making a one winged snow angel. Marco sat.

“Oh my fucking God, man.” Armin was too drained to even be angry at himself anymore. He took Marco’s hand.

Marco pulled his own hand back into lap. “Armin. .”

Armin sat straight up. “What? What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry. I think this . . . hooking up or whatever we’re doing should stop.”

Doused in ice water. Armin couldn’t understand. Everything was just fine. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, Armin. I don’t want you to think it’s that. There’s someone else.” He paused, tried to look Armin in the eye, and failed. “I’m sorry.”

Armin started to cry, then became angry. “It’s Jean, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t matter who.”

“It does. It does matter. Tell me it’s not him, then.”

Marco leaned away and stated, “Armin, it’s none of your business.”

“None of my-” He stopped, furious. Words flew from him, unminced by his filter. “Jean goes to France for the summer, loses twenty pounds and his virginity, gets a hot haircut, and all of a sudden you want to break up?”

“Armin, if you want to stay friends, I suggest that you stop right where you are,” Marco warned.

“Why?” Armin was hurt and he was going to bring Marco down with him. “Because I’m right?” he taunted. “Did you forget, Marco, that Jean was _straight_?”

“You’re so smart, aren’t you?” Marco stood up. He went to the door and said, low and venomous, because Marco never yelled. “You’re right about everything except for one thing: I’ve always been in love with Jean.”

Marco slammed the door.

A comment might have chased him out the door, something hasty and undeserved like, “Yeah run away to Jean and tell me how that fucking works out for you.”

Armin stayed in the room and did the inventory. And he was stupid enough to have believed that, over the summer, the contents of the closet might have changed. Everything done, his swollen heart choked him to the floor. He stayed for a long time, staring at Marco’s bag.


	5. The Club Fair (Oh Senpai, My Senpai)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> College life. Roommates, classes, parties, friends. You know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's underage drinking in this chapter.
> 
> so there's a lot of very mundane stuff to do and be said when it comes to this kind of beginning. I'll also say that the chapter lengths greatly vary throughout the story. 
> 
> so yeah, here goes. Thanks for reading up to this point. Means worlds to me.

Armin’s closet was stuffed with hangers and he wasn’t going to fit any more. There was a shelf above the rod in the closet, about six inches out of reach. He resorted to standing on his desk chair to force more clothing into the closet. It pained him to see his t-shirts become rumpled, but such was life. He considered thinning his collection.

He had an audience. Eren watched from his desk with conspicuous perplexion. He paused mid-way through chewing a baby carrot and suggested, “Why don’t you use a dresser?”

“I hate folding,” Armin answered.

Eren didn’t understand the struggle. 

Armin hopped off the chair and dug into the last enormous storage container from his move-in. The process of lugging all his shit into the room had been too exhausting to find suitable, accessible locations for things beyond the essentials. He peeked at Eren’s closet and frowned at the one hanging suit bag, three pairs of shoes, and deflated laundry sack.

Eren offered, “You could use my closet if you want.”

“. . . Really?”

 

And that was the beginning of the end. Whatever semblance of organization the room had on day one deteriorated and left no tangible divide between Armin space and Eren’s. Armin took command of both closets and Eren got a dresser and half in return. Eren's desk became a common storage for writing utensils and random office crap.

Their wall decorations were rather straightforward. On Eren’s side, there was a flyer and a photo. The flyer was from a rock concert at the SPAC. The photo was of Eren and Mikasa standing in the November chill, her in a red scarf and him in an itchy sweater, commemorating the sunny aftermath of the year’s first lake effect flurries. Armin had a map of the world with brightly colored pins on numerous places: Vilnius, Dublin, Ho Chi Minh City, Johannesburg, Cairo, Dubai, Istanbul, and countless others. One pin sat right in New York about a two hours’ drive away on Long Island.

Armin, an obsessive textbook hoarder, had a copy of the pre-calculus book that Eren bought new from the campus bookstore and loaned it to him. Eren returned his shrinkwrapped $250 tome and used some of the money to rent a residence association-approved micro-fridge, which arrived that evening. 

The two of them hiked up to the grocery store in town and left with diet cranberry Sierra Mist, one bag of Reese's’ Miniatures, a half gallon of skim milk, another pack of baby carrots, and a small container of hummus.

Around ten p.m. that night, Eren climbed into bed with the intention of sleeping. A fiery ball of anticipation ransacked his innards. He double-checked his alarms and lay wide-eyed, staring at the wall. My first day of college, he thought. 

His crisp new sheets felt unfamiliar. Armin deliberately softened his movements to little creaks and shifts. The glow from the medusa lamp painted the white walls a pale yellow. His heartbeat was relaxing, coaxing, lulling. . .

His alarm was too noisy, Jesus. Eren shut it off with a deft hand and yawned a cloud onto the screen. Daylight trickled through the windows daintily and grazed the exposed corner of his mattress. It was 7:30 in the morning. Eren wanted to sleep for the rest of the day. He allowed his eyes to rest for another moment.

His back-up alarm. Oh, thank God he’d set that one. Eren climbed out of bed and felt a pang of guilt upon noticing Armin’s sleeping face snuggled into his pillow. He shouldn’t have let that second alarm go off. He flinched as he unzipped his backpack to stuff fresh notebooks and folders inside.

Every shower in the bathroom was occupied. One man waited by the sinks in his towel with his shower tote while flipping through Reddit on his phone. Eren settled for brushing his teeth, running water through his greasy hair, and washing his face. This was what they invented deodorant for. 

With a mouthful of baby carrots and two Reese’s miniatures melting in the front pocket of his backpack, Eren escaped from his dorm (or, as Armin would say, “residence hall”) at five of eight. His first class was a survey history course in a building aptly named Lecture Center. Eren powerwalked across the quad and entered the building with thirty seconds to spare. He scrambled for the schedule folded up in his wallet and found himself paused directly outside his classroom door.

There was a thin window in the door. Inside, the professor turned on the computer and projector. The desks were occupied save for a couple of pencil-marked lefty desks in the front row.

Eren attempted to twist the door handle and found it locked. He yanked it up and down.

The professor started his introduction. Students in the room covered their giggles and watched Eren struggle. One student dragged himself from his desk and pulled the door open.

“You just have to push it open,” he told Eren. Fatigue cast shadows across his open, friendly face. It was one that Eren had seen around. 

“Thanks,” Eren replied. He claimed the seat in front of his savior. Shame prickled him to his ears, but he wordlessly accepted the stack of syllabi from the professor in stride. 

“Okay, class,” the professor started, holding up a syllabus, “Before we get right down into it, let’s turn to the last page of the syllabus. I’ve left a space for you to exchange information with one of your classmates. You know, in case you get sick, or your car breaks down, or whatever misfortune have you. You miss class, you email your friend. I’ll give you a few minutes to do this now.”

The girl to Eren’s left greeted him with a shy smile. 

He returned it and swiveled around in his seat to stick his hand out to the student behind him. “Hey. Thanks again. I’m Eren.”

“Marco,” he replied. He shook Eren’s hand. “Are you a first year?”

“Yeah.” Was it that obvious? “Are you?”

“Ha!” Marco’s smile regained some of its usual sparkle. “I wish. I’m a senior who looked at his progress report over the summer, realized he’d skipped a gen-ed, and ended up with an eight am.”

Eren nodded. “I see. My bad.”

“It’s all good.”

They exchanged email addresses and small talk. From hometowns, to majors, to new semester adjustment - Marco knew the routine conversation well.

The lecture began. It was dry. The professor believed in a trickle-down enthusiasm system. Perhaps, if he was excited about modern Chinese history, then his students would gain interest in the subject. It ended with a student mentioning the time and the professor’s reluctant class dismissal.

Eren stood and turned hopefully to Marco. “Where are you going after this?”

“Work,” Marco answered. He pulled dust from the outside corner of his eye. “I answer the phone at the Student Health Center.”

“Oh.” Eren didn’t know why he was disappointed.

They left the classroom and Eren absently walked beside Marco.

The hallway was wide. Students dragged their feet down the hallway, undoubtedly collecting charge as their worn Chuck Taylor's scraped along the carpeted floors. Eren took a step with his fingertips skimming along the rough brick wall. The way emptied into a lobby with a dozen tables, floor to ceiling windows, and vending machines for the desperate and weary. There was a bulletin board blocking one window, plastered with colorful advertisements and in the midst of being peppered with more. 

“How about you?” Marco asked.

“I’ve got-” Eren pulled out the wrinkled schedule from his pocket again. “Macroeconomics.”

Marco raised an eyebrow. He cast a knowledgeable eye down at the paper and said, not unkindly, “This building-” He indicated the acronym, then pointed down the hall whence they came. “-is that way.”

Another man called out, “Hey, Marco!”

Eren noticed him first. He was leaning against the window by the exit holding two cups of coffee and a brown paper bag from the campus cafe. He was in sleep clothes. His heels hung off the backs of his black Adidas sandals. 

Marco looked up from the paper. Pleased surprise blew away the last, clinging cobwebs of grogginess from his face. “Jean! What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like?” Jean returned. He walked up to Marco and passed him one coffee and the bag. “Light, no sugar and a croissant.”

Eren shied away, feeling unwelcome in the exchange. 

Jean’s attention lazily wandered to him during Marco’s profuse thanks. Jean waved. “Hey. Eren, right?”

“That’s me,” Eren replied. He couldn’t recall having met Jean.

Marco was startled and slopped a bit of coffee to the floor. “Right. Sorry. He’s in my class.”

“I should go,” Eren announced. “See you Friday.”

“If not before,” Marco replied politely.

Eren couldn’t help but overhear the rest of their conversation before it became swallowed by the hum of other voices.

Marco questioned, “You know him from somewhere?”

“Him? Yeah. He lives in our dorm.”

“He does? Oh, I feel bad now. I wonder if he recognized me.”

They started to walk away. Eren watched for a moment over his shoulder. Marco and Jean kept pace with each other as easily as breathing. Jean was broader across the shoulders and Marco was a hair taller. The sight was only missing their bulky equipment bags.

Oh.

 

Friday came. Eren left his room early and bumped into Marco on the quad. 

“Morning,” Marco said.

Eren returned in kind.

The quad was quiet and still around them. Stone geometric shapes laid in a pile of art off to their left, collecting bird excrement. A town resident walked a fluffy puppy on an extendable leash. The pup sniffed Eren’s pant leg as they passed. A student rode her bicycle up to the rack in front of Lecture Center and started to noisily fiddle with her persnickety bike lock. The campus cafe accepted the tired masses in an excruciatingly slow trickle. 

Marco asked Eren about his other classes.

Eren had a lot to say. He found himself sharing his stories with the same language he’d used to describe the events to Mikasa and Armin. It was like his unfunny comedy bit.

“I’ve got this theory that you have to sacrifice something to obtain your doctorate,” Eren started up for the third time.

Marco listened. Sometimes he added in his own well-rehearsed recapitulations of his experiences. “I was once in a forty-five person lecture, stuck in a back row seat. It was still the first week. I could barely recall the professor’s name, let alone any of my classmates’. She was writing with this red marker, right? I’d been fighting the need to visit the optometrist for a good year and a half, so I was squinting like a man staring at the sun. And, all of a sudden, mid sentence, she stops, switches to black, and asks, ‘Can you see this better, Marco?’”

Eren shuddered. “So observant.”

“Yeah,” Marco agreed, “she’s like Jean.”

Eren could neither confirm nor deny this claim. He remembered to push open the door instead of futzing with the handle. 

Marco chose the same seat he had on Tuesday. Eren sat beside him and earned strong looks of disapproval from the other students.

“What? Are there assigned seats?” he asked.

“People are anal about-” Marco used air quotes. “-‘their’ seat.” 

“It’s just a seat,” Eren said. Though, his new desk was intended for right-handed students and was noticeably cleaner than the one he’d settled for on Tuesday.

The second hand lazed its way around the clock and the professor launched into his lecture like a full orchestra conductor charging into a six-eight allegro piece. Eren’s head swam in dates and names in pinyin. Facts were intermittently sprinkled in. Eren struggled to discern the fondant from the meat. With a final slap, the professor closed the lesson with the announcement of a short quiz the next Tuesday.

Eren added the quiz to his planner. He mentally prepared for the next battle for consciousness against the charts and arrows of macroeconomics. 

Marco sighed as the classroom door swung closed behind him. “Quiz already. And here I was looking to skate through senior year.”

“You wanna study together?” Eren asked.

Marco was briefly taken aback. “Yeah, okay. Why don’t you take down my number?” After he recited the digits, he added, “Or you could always come by. We’re in room 210.”

Success! Eren resisted the urge to cheer, but allowed his teeth to betray his happiness. Marco's number sat nestled awkwardly between Levi and Mikasa on his contact list.

 

Eren returned to his room after grabbing dinner at the dining hall with Mikasa and was surprised to find Armin nose to the grindstone at his desk. Even Eren realized that Friday evenings weren’t meant for flash cards and textbooks.

Armin didn’t look up from his notebook. “Sup.”

“Not much, you studying there?” The obviousness of it made Eren’s insides coil with embarrassment.

Armin hummed affirmingly. He checked his phone. “I’m going out in an hour to ruin my chances of studying tomorrow so I figured I’d get some time in.”

“That makes sense, I guess.”

Eren sat on his bed with a fantasy novel he’d nicked from Levi’s shelf without realizing it had been the fifth in an ongoing series. The spine was creased, the occasional page was folded into an old bookmark, and dog hairs clung to the pages. The books were the least well-kept things in Levi’s home. He would sit in his armchair and crush the book into one handed submission so he could hold his mug of cooling instant coffee. Mikasa resorted to hiding her books in her top dresser drawer.

Without looking up from his book, Eren used the power of his second sight to watch Armin study. Consequently, Eren also saw a couple in the room behind him beginning to get hot and heavy, a squirrel hopping along the exterior wall, and girls passing a bong around in the room above. He _tried_ not to make a habit of spying on people. 

Armin tucked his hair behind his ear about every four seconds. He held his pen between his lips when he flipped through the pages in the text, but didn’t appear tempted to nibble. There were index cards still wrapped in plastic on the edge of the desk. He sat cross legged on his chair with his feet folded under him. His head turned to Eren and back to his work like he was checking if he was still there.

Sunset punctured the shades and they bled orange. The noise of the semester's first Friday steadily increased. "Gangnam Style" leaked through the walls and, somehow, constructively interfered with "Another Brick in the Wall" to perfectly cleanse the mind of the material one had gathered over the course of the week. A distinctly patterned thumping of bed frame against the wall persisted for four minutes, suddenly sped up, then stopped. Eren focused on the same paragraph in the novel, tracing over the words without absorption, and tried to fight down the shame of witnessing the cause of said thumping. When that failed, he sought Armin's face for equal traces of embarrassment to only see a curtain of hair as he worked through a problem in his notebook. His pencil scratched against the college ruled lines with light, virtually noiseless, marks that left wisps instead of statements. 

Armin stood. His chair rubbed against the floor. He marched over to the microfridge and grabbed a Reese’s miniature. He tore through the foil, bit the paper away with his teeth, and popped the cool treat between his molars to crush through its hardened surface with a muffled click. Next, he grabbed a can of Sierra Mist and brought it over to his desk. He considered the things on his desk before pushing his papers into a jumbled pile and shoving them into his backpack. From the second drawer in his desk, he withdrew a liter bottle of Svedka brand vodka and a shot glass.

The bottle twisted open with a crack. Armin poured himself a very full shot and looked up at Eren. “Want some?”

Eren declined. “I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble. I’m only 18.”

Armin carefully raised his glass. “I completely respect your decision, but I must tell you: I’m only 19, so the only person you could get in trouble is yourself.”

“Guess you’re right,” Eren replied.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” Armin asked.

“Not at all, have at it.”

Armin smiled. It wasn’t a beautiful thing. It was a sneer holding in a mouthful of vinegar. “Well, then. Happy Friday.” He tapped the shot glass against his desk and knocked back the vodka straight. He shivered through a grimace and scrambled to open the tab on the soda to wash it down.

“That didn’t look good,” Eren commented. He had absolutely zero experience with alcohol. He’d sworn off it when he learned that Levi was a recovering alcoholic. Levi also thought that the people who gave underage kids booze were out of their freaking minds.

“I’d say it makes for a fitting end to my week.” Armin poured himself a second shot. “Sorry if I’ve been shitty.”

Eren hadn’t noticed anything was wrong. “No need to apologize.”

Armin got chatty. He finished his Sierra Mist, tossed it into the empty recycling bin with a satisfying echo, and leaned against Eren’s bed.

“I’ve read those books,” he said. He pointed to the book on Eren’s lap that Eren had been pointedly ignoring since the vodka had come out. “Good page turners. Funny. Read ‘em in one night.”

“Oh yeah?” 

“You doing anything tonight?” 

The abrupt shift in conversational direction threw Eren for a loop. “No?”

“Let’s go bond, roomie,” Armin said. He tugged Eren off the bed and told him to get some shoes on. 

There was a terrifying thing about starting college that was universal: everyone was lonely. Everyone wanted to make friends, and fast. Eren had Mikasa, but he knocked on her door to beg for company more times than she had. There was a seedling planted in a pot label Marco, but it hadn’t quite burgeoned to that level of friendship yet. And here was Armin, a little tipsy, reaching out into the common ground and trying his best.

 

The man at the door took Armin’s ten dollar bill and handed both him and Eren a plastic cup. It was crowded in the house. Armin slithered through the bodies like water through gravel and Eren was left to elbow through the difference. There was music roaring over the voices, shuffling feet, and sloshing, foamy beer. 

Eren forced his way down a cramped, unlit stairwell towards a basement. He caught a drunk person who had tripped with his shoe under the lip of the first stair and prompted lost track of Armin. In a fit of guilt and responsibility, Eren helped half-carry the man up the rest of the stairs. When Eren returned downstairs, he wandered into the musty air and tried to pick out a familiar face from the crowd. The ceilings were low and in places fluffy pink insulation sagged into sight. The music became muffled, conversation bubbled, and shoes stumbled over and crunched the remains of broken bottles. 

Facing away, was a head of blond hair talking into the ear of a woman whose tongue was scraping out the remains of a jello shot. Eren tapped the strong, bare shoulder and a flurry of thoughts deduced that this was distinctly _not Armin_. Regret swept over him as the head turned to reveal messy sidebangs, a sterling silver nose stud, and almond eyes in a vivid hazel green. 

"Oh, oops, my bad," Eren said, retracting his hand. "Thought you were someone else." 

A wide, red mouth revealed big teeth. "I don't suppose I mind." 

She introduced herself as Victoria and her friend as Em. They sprayed him with a barrage of small talk. Em edged over to Eren's side and placed a hand on his shoulder. He could smell her breath and see the uneven clumps of mascara on her eyelashes. She crushed the small paper cup in her hand and let it fall to the floor. Emerald green fingernail polish glittered in the hazy light.

A silent discussion transpired between the two women as pointed looks and twitching eyebrows. Eren left a trace of a smile on his face and scanned the room for Armin, not quite desperate to evacuate from the situation, but getting there. The implication when he agreed to attend a party with Armin had been, as far as he had been aware, that he'd be following Armin around and not hung out to dry. Levi's voice, a dark, matter-of-fact sound in his memory, stated that drunk people were selfish assholes. 

Victoria said she needed some air and stumbled away. Her ankle twisted as her high heel awkwardly contacted the floor.

Eren held his empty cup protectively to his chest.

“You don’t drink?” she asked. She was yelling unnecessarily into his ear. 

“Not really.”

“So, you smoke weed?” she assumed next.

“I’ve never done that either.”

She laughed. It was cute and earnest. “Then, are you like straight-edge or something?”

“Like a ruler?” Eren tried.

“That’s a good one.” Em giggled. A black curl freed itself from her bun and bounced into the center of her forehead. “Hey, so. Would you be offended if I thought you were attractive?”

Eren shrank against the wall and backed into someone’s sweaty shoulder. It was truly warm in this house. Summer humidity was on tap. One of Eren’s shoes had been soaked through by a spilled drink. Em waited for his answer and slid her hand up the back of his neck.

“No,” Eren answered honestly.

Em pulled him down for a kiss.

Eren panicked. He dropped his cup and warped directly upwards. He landed roughly against the shingled roof. It was much quieter. His heart pounded and crickets chirped. The sight of her closing eyes and the shadow of her modest cleavage stained his thoughts. His elbows stung from the impact. A tender inspection had his fingertips come away with blood. 

He called Mikasa. No answer. He saw Marco’s entry in his contacts, shook his head, and tried for Armin. No such luck.

Eren inched down to the gutters and checked the shadow behind the house for witnesses. Finding none, he moved to the ground. A delayed iciness sluggishly permeated his flesh and his t-shirt clung to his chest from the static. He shivered despite the tenacious warmth of the summer air. 

“Don’t fucking touch me,” a woman spat.

Eren jumped and flattened himself against the side of the house before he realized the voice had come from the side yard.

“I wasn’t trying to,” Armin argued.

Eren sighed in relief, eased out of his attempted stealth, and walked around the corner.

“You _weren’t_ trying to literally cup my whole boob just now?” The woman was Victoria, being loud. She was brandishing her high heels with one hand like a flail. The chatter around the scene simmered to whispers.

“I’m sorry.” Armin didn’t have even an iota of apology in his tone. He was on the ground, vaguely sitting, with his arms keeping him propped up. “I’m drunk and I fell.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but being drunk isn’t an excuse to assault women.”

The man Armin had given money sought out the source of the commotion. 

Armin let out a frustrated groan. “Okay. Look, you’re completely and totally in the right. Being drunk is not an excuse. There’s never an excuse,” he intoned. His words blurred a little on the aspirated consonants, but retained their clarity. “But the fact of the matter is. . . I wasn’t trying to assault you. I’m going find my friend and go home and we’ll never see each other again. Happy?”

“Armin!” Eren called out.

“There he is now. So, I’ll be going-”

The host of the party hoisted Armin up by the elbow. “Is this guy bothering you?”

“Yes,” Victoria stated.

Armin’s patience shattered. He tried to wrench the man’s fingers from his arm. “This is none of your fucking business.”

“It’s my house,” he replied. “That makes it my business. Give me your ID so I can ban you from the house.”

“She thinks I was trying to grope her, but she’s wrong. I fell-” He spelled out each word with a wave of his hand. “-because I am drunk. And, you know what? I’m fucking gay,” Armin exclaimed.

The man’s hand jumped off Armin’s skin. 

A sick smile broke across Armin’s face and he wobbled backwards. He hiccoughed where he should have snickered. “What? Afraid it’s contagious?”

Eren walked into the commotion and rested a hand on Armin’s upper back. “Let’s go.”

“Yeah.” He aggression dissolved and he leaned into Eren’s touch wearily.

They left. Warnings to not return to the premises crackled through the moist air only to reach deaf ears.

Armin swerved. Eren held him around the waist to keep him from stumbling into the street.

"You didn't hafta step in, you know," Armin said. 

They were walking on a stretch of broken sidewalk on Main Street heading uphill. Crowds collected outside the bars and produced clouds of smoke and chittering laughter. Police officers stood on the street corners and waited for bad news. There was a puddle of vomit caked onto the storm drain. 

"I didn't, really." Eren hadn't even been tempted to throw a punch. 

Armin stopped. "Dizzy," he explained. He swallowed heavily three or four times. 

"All good. Take your time." Eren propped Armin up against the storefront window of a pizzeria. 

"Eren," Armin started. He swatted at Eren's shoulder to get his attention. An oddly dopey smile spread across his face. "We should get pizza. Here, take my card-" 

"Whoa, wait a minute." Eren pushed the card away. He knew Armin had a job, but, honestly, he was the son of a doctor who gave him money instead of love. "You already spotted me for the party, let me cover this." 

"No, no, no. ." Armin shook his head once, clamped his hand over his mouth, waited, then continued, "You're being a good friend. More than good. The best. Seriously. You, you deserve pizza." 

Drunk praise was still praise, Eren's heart figured. "Thanks." 

"No, thank _you_ ," Armin drawled. "Now, it's gotta be . . you gotta order it-" He pinched the bridge of his nose in thought. "-for delivery."

Eren knocked on the words written across the window. "Armin, we're right here."

"Yes, right, but I have the gift of clairvoyance. You will-oh God, just trust me, okay?" He hiccoughed with a grimace and spit onto the sidewalk. "Fuck, that was gross, I'm sorry." 

". . .It's fine," Eren said hastily. He took the debit card and did as he was told. 

Things were better with pizza. Armin climbed into his bed with his slice. Grease dripped down his fingers and onto his comforter before Eren got him a paper towel to hold it with. It was the best pizza Eren had ever had in his life. Armin agreed.

“I’m like, almost sober,” Armin commented. It was two o’clock in the morning.

“That’s good?”

“That party sucked. I had way more fun hanging out here and eating pizza with you.” Armin slid off his bed, dislodging his comforter, and left it hanging off the side. 

“Yeah.”

Armin beckoned Eren over and wrapped him in tight hug. Armin smelled like pizza, beer, and sweat. Eren patted Armin’s back stiffly until it was over.

Armin shook his head. “Your hugs need work.”

 

The weekend was on its last legs - 6 p.m. on a Sunday. Armin had gone off somewhere and Mikasa was "busy rewatching _Criminal Minds_." 

Eren ran out of do-overs for his online pre-calc homework and would be stuck with the C- for his first assignment. He checked his planner and saw a huge note to self about his Chinese history quiz. He gently slapped himself in the face with the book. 

He tested his luck and wandered up to room 210 with his notebook in hand.

Eren knocked.

“Door’s open!” Marco yelled.

Eren eased open the door and noticed Armin first, perched on a bed with his computer on his lap. Jean was biting into his lower lip as he attempted to attach a plastic segment of wing to the model he was assembling on his desk. Marco sat at his desk balancing a psychology GRE review book on his head. A track from the musical _Hamilton_ played from his speakers.

“Hey.” Eren gave an undirected wave.

Jean didn’t look up. “Yo.”

“Uh, hey?” Armin asked. He was sitting in front of a wall of posters with big-eyed cute characters in schoolgirl uniforms. A Japanese flag hung from the headboard.

“Oh, Eren!” Marco’s slid the book off of his head and caught it. His black hair regained its effortless body. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.”

Armin’s bemusement curdled into indignation. He returned his attention to his screen and typed with hammering force.

“Didn’t want to bother you during like, the weekend,” Eren explained.

“You’re no bother,” Marco assured. “I was obviously getting nowhere fast.”

Eren was welcomed in and seated on Marco’s hastily straightened bed. He had a forest green comforter and a bundled up throw blanket. There was a jersey pinned to his wall.

Jean and Marco’s room smelled of dust, Downy fabric softener, and garlic. There were clothes that had been kicked under the beds. The shades over the windows were set at different heights. There was a large flat screen television set up on a dresser. A black PS4 sat in front of the TV, strong and glinting like a chunk of obsidian.

“Oh, yeah,” Marco remembered, “This is our friend, Armin. We’re going to be discussing some club stuff on the side, if you don’t mind.”

“Armin’s my roommate,” Eren shared happily. He gave Armin a thumbs-up.

Marco chuckled nervously. “Small campus, huh?”

Jean finally affixed his piece of wing and puffed out his chest, proud. He started to gently sand the excess plastic from the pop-out packaging off the next piece. He asked, “Are you the guy that couldn’t open the window?”

Armin frowned at the lack of respect for words shared in confidence. He answered, “Are you the guy that spend his entire Sunday building a robot?”

“It’s not a robot,” Jean averred. “This is a Gundam. The Wing Gundam Zero, to be exact.”

“Your other one looked more worth the time, honestly,” Marco commented. He hopped up on his bed next to Eren and started flipping through the pages of his Chinese history notebook.

Jean held up the box the kit had come in. “But this one is a classic. A memory from my childhood. I grew up on _Gundam Wing_.”

Eren figured that downstate kids must have led vastly different lives from him and Mikasa. The closest he had to robots was piloting the flail knife through the brush to create a path for a four wheeler. He had run over over the remains of a stone wall. He hadn’t even noticed through the scream of the machine, his sound suppressors, and his earbuds booming with the Beastie Boys.

Marco and Eren put their notes together, condensed the information down to one page of important stuff, and took turns testing each other on the facts.

Meanwhile, Jean and Armin discussed what they needed to do to prepare for their club’s General Interest Meeting. Armin worked on designing the flyers. Jean needed to wake up at the ass crack of dawn and line up in front of the SUB to secure a second hour for their club.

“Marco, you’ve got the club fair handled this semester, right?” Armin asked.

Marco thought about it. “What day is it again?”

“This Thursday, 2-5.”

“Oh.” Marco deflated and looked down at his bed guiltily. 

“Oh?” Armin prompted.

“I’ve got Thursday lab starting at 3 o’clock. It’s the beginning of the semester, so it might be a quick one. .” Marco trailed off.

Armin cursed. “Aren’t you taking Chemistry? Chem labs take forever.”

Marco tried to improvise. “How about you, Jean? What’s your schedule for Thursday?”

“I’ve got a 1:30 and a 3:00, could get there by quarter after four for clean up?” Jean offered.

“Some president you are,” Armin grumbled. He laid back on Jean’s bed and massaged his temples. “I’m on at Starbucks in town until 4. Maybe I could ask around for a shift change, but I already owe more favors than I’m owed.”

Eren interrupted, “I’ve got Thursday’s off if you need help with something.”

All the eyes in the room shifted to him. Eren took that as a sign to continue. “I stacked my schedule to have all my classes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday.”

“Crazed,” Jean remarked.

“You’d really help us out?” Marco asked.

“Of course,” Eren replied. He held the ‘that’s what friends are for’ platitude behind his teeth.

 

Armin was bitter.

He didn’t want to make the stupid flyers. Nothing in his formal education had prepared him to make alluring posters for a school club. Last year, Sasha, a graphic design major, worked on them. She hadn’t even kept herself interested in the club. The General Interest meeting was the same day as the club fair. Armin needed to make pocket sized hand outs for people to walk away with at the fair to help remind the interested to attend.

Armin felt worse when that the best picture he had on his computer was of Marco and Jean at the Oneonta tournament from last spring. Jean’s attack had swung out cleanly and grazed Marco’s chest to score the winning point.

Armin was still mad at Marco. Though, if Armin was being honest with himself, the anger had vastly cooled and his pride was only bruised instead of broken. 

Marco’s scrunched up cutely as he scoured his lobes for material. He made a little self-depreciative laugh when the scrounged up answer was wrong. His long lean legs dangled of his bed. He illustrated several concepts in the same sentence with the same ambiguous gestures. His sleeveless shirt showed off his arms.

Marco was only paying attention to Eren. Armin reasoned he was being an attentive study partner. Emotional thoughts crashed the boards after logic failed to sink his worries. 

Eren had eyes more expressive than the last line of slam-poetry night before the room filled with the snickering applause of snapping fingers. He tip-toed about in the mornings and flinched as he zipped his bag when he thought Armin was asleep. He ate carrots with hummus instead of ranch. Eren had a body with a metabolism instead of athleticism. And, when Armin saw Eren’s face in his peripheral vision, it kind of reminded him of Jean’s. Somehow.

So, Armin was jealous. Jealous in a way that urged him to tear them apart at the seams or to stitch himself into the mix for the sake of drama. But Armin wasn’t petty enough to jeopardize his comfortable living situation to cause misery and gain nothing for himself.

Armin said good night when Eren did. There was a hallway, a stairway, and another hallway on the way to their room.

“Thanks again,” Armin said.

“It’s no problem. I’m glad that I could help you guys out,” Eren replied. The shoelaces of his right shoe had come undone and he ignored how they loosely flopped about.

“Do you have any interest in fencing at all?”

“I didn’t really, but it seems like the place where all the cool people are.”

Armin couldn’t help but laugh into the back of his hand. Eren sounded like such a high schooler. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything more wrong. Fencing has a glamour to those who are substantially unglamourous.”

“Then consider me glamoured,” Eren joked. He considered Armin seriously. “I think it’d be really interesting to see you in action.” Eren swung an imaginary sword.

“That’s more of a Jean or Marco move,” Armin said. He extended his arm and half-assed a lunge. “This is more like me.”

“What’s the difference?” Eren asked.

“I suppose if you’re going to be acting as our interim recruitment officer, you should know some things,” Armin supposed. “There are three weapons in fencing: foil, saber, and épée. Foil is a right-of-way sport where you can only score a point on your opponent’s torso and the lower portion of the bib of their mask. It’s a stabbing weapon. Saber also has right-of-way and its target area is the entire upper body including torso, arms, armed hand, and mask. Saber is a slashing weapon.”

“That sounds fun. Like a pirate or something,” Eren commented.

“But wait, I’ve saved the best for last,” Armin said. “Épée is the weapon of the master tactician. There are no rules of right-of-way to govern your actions. And, get this, the target area is your opponent’s entire body. You want to fake your opponent out and stab him in the foot? Completely and totally legal.”

Eren nodded with intrigue. “Bet that doesn’t happen often.”

“You’d be surprised. The possibilities are endless.” Armin waved his hand like he was describing a rainbow, or wiping the steam away from a mirror. “I think you’d be a good fit for épée.”

Eren lit up. “Yeah?”

“Definitely,” Armin confirmed. “You’re pretty tall - more reach is a natural advantage. You’re quick on your feet, literally and figuratively. It’s perfect for épée. You ever play chess?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m good at it, but I’ve played against Mikasa’s uncle a bunch of times,” Eren replied, leaving out the detail that he hasn’t won a game since he turned thirteen and Levi stopped letting him win. 

“But you’ve had your fill of strategy, the key to épée fencing,” Armin concluded.

They were at their door. Armin keyed them inside and set his computer down. Eren yawned loudly as he returned his notebook to his bag. 

It was still too early to go to bed, especially for Eren, who had tomorrow off, but he laid in bed anyway. He thought about all the sports he’d opted out of in fear that the rush of the game would exposing his powers. He had made a promise to keep them out of the public eye (for the most part). As a teenager, Eren’s control over his powers could usually check his flight-or-fight instincts, but he had missed the fundamental years of sports and sucked at them all (especially basketball). He had attended Mikasa’s track and field meets and reluctantly went for walks by himself or read books when she had karate lessons.

Eren didn’t regret it. He was sure that being captured by the military and experimented on would have been way worse. It was sad. He had no faith that his country would protect him instead of exploit him.

But now, this could be his chance. 

“I think I’ll try épée,” Eren said. “After all, it’s great excuse to hang out with you.”

“Yes! Score 1 for épée!” Armin cheered. There was a twinge in his heart that Armin was well acquainted with. It came from the messages of his hometown friends, cats winding their tails around his calf, and smiles from beautiful strangers.


	6. Look at This Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People join the club and it stays alive for another year. (Shocking, I know.)

Mikasa made it two steps away from the doorway of her mandatory seminar before her phone buzzed. There was something about being in a room with twenty other first years that made Mikasa believe she’d accidentally enrolled in a 13th year of school as opposed to transcending to university. She buried a yawn into the crook of her elbow.

The message was from Eren. “ _Hey, where you at?_ ”

A want for caffeine flickered tenaciously. She replied, “ _Getting coffee, you?_ ”

Mikasa wore a denim jacket and a silk scarf. The academic buildings were over air conditioned. She was almost thankful for the warmth of surging bodies gathered in the stairwell on her way out of the building. From her front jacket pocket, her phone vibrated again.

Eren answered, " _Oh, bring me something? I'm helping at club fair._ "

Her brow furrowed in confusion. Eren wasn’t in any clubs. Though, if she recalled correctly, he had mentioned joining Armin’s club. Mikasa wasn’t particularly taken by Armin. His face was often tinged with smug conclusions he had drawn about others. But Eren wanted to be his friend and that counted greatly in his favor. Eren had a knack for picking out good people.

" _Yeah, sure._ "

The ground floor hallway led out towards the campus coffeehouse. A professor dragged a suitcase into a classroom. One student in an electric wheelchair zoomed through and the sea of bodies naturally parted to allow her passage. A line for the computer lab snaked around the corner and out of sight. People pushed through the doors to get outside. 

A student ahead of Mikasa held the door for her. He stood taller and broader with bright orange active style earbuds whose wires crept down the collar of his shirt. A canvas messenger bag hung off one shoulder decorated with a variety of flag pins from European countries. 

“Thanks,” Mikasa said.

He tugged off an earbud and replied, “No problem.” 

She recognized his voice. It echoed down the residence hall corridors and carried through the classroom wall into her first year seminar. She held eye contact for a beat longer than necessary to let her memory work its magic. His name was Jean. Mystery solved, she breezed by him with cool indifference.

It was the first Thursday of September. The cicadas had quieted. A smattering of leaves had yellowed, fled from their branches, and danced in the crisp breeze on the sidewalk. Fall had rushed the last weeks of summer away. 

The coffee shop was crowded with students fueling up for their next class. She joined the line, which grew exponentially as students emptied from their lectures. She stood and waited with her hands tucked in her pockets. After two minutes, she fidgeted with the fuzzy hem on the inside of her pocket, twisting and pulling the strands.

The telltale scent of autumn, pumpkin spice, wafted over the room. The espresso machine screeched as an inexperienced barista held the frother too close to the bottom of metal pitcher in his hand. The hair of the woman placing her order was a striking teal french braid that reached down to the rainbow studded belt holding up her black skinny jeans. 

Mikasa stared appreciatively for a long moment. She wasn’t in Roseboom anymore.

The line crawled forward. Mikasa ordered two medium coffees. Drinks in hand, she moved to the stand of sugars and cream and found the short counter entirely occupied by other students pushing and shoving and sloshing to thrust their greedy hands into the sugar baskets. Mikasa waited. She wasn’t in the mood to fight nor was she rushed to make a transition. 

Jean was on the coffee line, Mikasa saw. He appeared to have waited until he was at the front to squint up at the menu and do his deliberating. Thankfully, the between-periods chaos was ebbing away - the line shorter. After he ordered, he stood next to Mikasa with his cup and waited for some counter to open up. He softly hissed and passed his drink from hand to hand.

“Don’t know how you can hold onto those cups without a sleeve,” he commented.

Calloused palms protected Mikasa from the discomfort of the cup’s heat. She shrugged. “Used to it, I guess.”

Jean stepped an inch closer. His eyes traced her face. “Picking something up for a friend?”

“Mhm.”

“For Eren?” Jean guessed. Mikasa’s wide-eyed attention snapped to him. “He’s doing us a huge favor with the fair.”

“Oh? You’re in Armin’s club too?”

“I’m the president, actually.”

"Huh. Is that so."

A space opened on the counter and they filled it. Mikasa took a handful of Sugar In The Raw packets and stuffed them into her pocket. She then moved over to the cream dispenser, added half and half to her cup until it was light and a drop of skim to Eren’s. Jean tore through two sugar packets at once and dumped them into his coffee before adding a liberal amount of half and half himself. 

“Are you heading over there now?” Mikasa asked.

Jean looked up mid-stir. “Yeah.”

“Mind if I tag along?” She had not gotten around to familiarizing herself with the buildings outside of those she needed to attend for classes (and the coffee place, of course). 

“Oh, uh, not at all.”

Jean removed his other earbud for their walk. They dangled against his chest. He talked about his club and recruitment as he trekked to the SUB on mindless autopilot. 

Mikasa followed and listened, nodding when appropriate. Fencing Club, was it? She had watched a fencing event of the Summer Olympics for about an hour before she fell asleep. Not that it had been uninteresting - Levi had been pinching pennies and refusing to turn on the air conditioning, so she ended up napping from the heat of the day in front of the fan on the couch. 

The Club Fair was held in a modest auditorium. There were dozens of tables manned by crews of one or two individuals. The amount of students passing through the club fair was a trickle at best. Some of the tables had a significant amount of effort put into them with signs and banners and quirky little identifying decorations. Others had just a placard, a sign up sheet with a clipboard, and a representative scrolling through their go-to form of social media on their phone.

One club was distributing cups of popcorn to attendees. The buttery smell filled the room. The Student Association was in charge of a cotton candy machine. The sparse visitors walked around with a treat in each hand and wandered down the rows with the glazed over lack of wonder of adults at a traveling carnival. 

Mikasa stepped over the thick orange power cord leading to the popcorn machine and found Eren standing behind a table covered in fencing equipment. A breath of a laugh escaped her when she saw his pin-striped button down and almost, but not quite matching tie. 

He was focused on scanning for potential recruits, face pinched like a vice principal making a surprise check up at the school cafeteria. She entered his search area with Jean at her side.

His concentration broke into a smile and he shouted, “Mikasa!”

The fatigued student at the adjacent table flinched and averted her attention from the 3DS in her hands to give him a withering look.

“What am I, chopped liver?” Jean muttered.

Mikasa set the extra coffee down at the table. “I brought sugar if you need it.”

“Oh wow.” Eren brought the cup up to his lips and took a long gulp. “It’s perfect. I didn’t think you’d actually get it for me. Thank you.”

Sometimes it was worth to see her friend smile. Mikasa kept her swell of happiness inside, shrugged, and sipped her coffee. 

“Eren, thanks again man. We would’ve been dead in the water without you,” Jean said. 

Mikasa inspected one of the pocket-sized flyers on the table that had been on the ugly side of a guillotine paper cutter. The bouting participants looked professional in the clean, form-fitting uniforms. Only the blur of empty gymnasium bleachers in the background differentiated the shot from an Olympic freeze frame. 

“Yeah, well.” Eren shrugged.

“Would you mind holding on for just another minute? I’m going head up to the closet and get geared up for the last half hour.” Jean put down his coffee and self-consciously half-jogged from the room.

Mikasa lingered. “Are you planning on joining this club?”

“Yeah!” Eren announced. He grabbed a random weapon from the pile on the table and thrust it into the air. “I’m going to be an épéeist.”

“Eren, that’s a foil,” Mikasa said flatly. 

“I know. God.” He put the foil down quickly with a huff and felt warmth spread up to his ears.

“That aside, how’s recruitment going?”

“About that. . .” Eren trailed off and pushed the clipboard towards her.

Only Eren’s name and school assigned email address was on the list. Oh, that is just sad, she thought. Mikasa took up the pen and started to add her own.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Eren asked.

“Something new, I guess,” Mikasa replied. 

“Which weapon would you choose?”

“Épée.” She tapped an épée’s guard with the end of her pen. It resonated like a bell.

There was a pause. Her name below his on the list assuaged his ache of loneliness and the bitter taste of failure that shamed the taste of unsweetened coffee.

“Thank you,” he said. His eyes held the sincerity his tone lacked. 

Something crashed with the shattering crunch of broken glass and the whirling malfunctioning of machinery. 

Mikasa whipped around to see the popcorn trolley toppled over and spewing popping kernels across the floor. The folks running it were angrily berating a man currently prone on the floor with his feet tangled in the orange extension cords. A shock leapt from Eren’s hand to the nearest weapon guard as he placed down his coffee and he roughly shoved plastic folding chairs aside on his way over. 

“Oh, that’s not good,” she muttered. Mikasa kept her distance and sipped her coffee, ready to step in if necessary. She had appointed herself as Eren’s behavioral manager since their middle school years when Eren decided he’d heard one too many racial slurs directed at her. 

Armin laid with the popcorn around him and his Starbucks uniform hat askew. Coffee had splattered across the floor and was beginning to seep into the sleeves of his black button down shirt. He’d bit into the side of his tongue when his chin collided with the hardwood floor. For an extra moment, he stayed on the ground, preserving his meager pride.

“What the fuck, man?” 

“I’m sorry,” Armin said. Blood dribbled out of his mouth. He shakily raised himself up onto his hands and knees. The temptation to spit the coppery mess out of his mouth crossed his mind, but he pushed his forearm to his lips and let the blood ooze into his shirt instead. 

The students in charge of the stand started to argue with each other.

“Should we take him to the health center?”

“No, we shouldn’t take him to the health center,” the other mocked. “ He’s fine. This was a rental. We’re going to be in deep shit.”

Armin wanted to go to bed and forget about today. He listened to his professor trying to cajole the class into guessing ‘correct’ message of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” for the entire seventy-five minute block. Work had been both kinds of hell: nonstop action in a war of staff and consumer and the doldrums of fighting off drowsiness and cleaning clean counters under the guise of staying busy. He’d seen a Trump 2016 lawn sign on his way back onto campus. New York wasn’t nearly as blue as people thought it was. 

“Are you okay?” Eren’s voice got his attention. He stood over Armin and gave him a hand up. For some reason, he looked more angry than sympathetic. 

“Just peachy.” Armin surveyed the destruction around him with a haggard huff and adjusted his hat. “I’d brought you a coffee, but. . .”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Eren bent to retrieve the emptied cardboard cup and Armin gently grabbed his arm.

"You don't have to. Wouldn't want to ruin your good shirt," Armin said, attempting a smirk with his sticky lips. 

"Oh, right," Eren agreed. He loosened his tie out of its pristine Windsor knot and started unbuttoning his shirt. "Nothing to stop me from helping you now, is there?" 

Armin felt a little better. He considered having a laugh or a cry and settled on deep breath. "Thanks." 

The people manning the popcorn trolley knew better than to press the issue. One of them had acquired a broom and dustpan to assist Eren and Armin in cleaning up the mess. The other was pulling out his own hair over a phone call and pacing around the room.

Jean returned to the room in full uniform, mask under his arm, and hastily sidestepping around a piece of broken glass on the floor. He asked, “Jesus, what the hell happened?”

Armin shook his head and shooed him back towards the table.

The uniform fit him well, earning him a share of glances ranged from aesthetic admiration to ‘Who’s this asshole?’. His knickers hugged his thighs and his university colored striped socks stretched to accommodate his muscular calves. He walked with his shoulders back and his chin back, his true height and confidence revealed. A dumb smile spread across his face.

“You’re still here,” Jean said.

Mikasa replied, “Well, I signed up for your club.”

“Oh?” Jean quirked an eyebrow. “Ever fenced before?”

“No.” 

“I see. So, you’re willing to take a _stab_ at it?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re terrible.”

“You’re smiling,” Jean noted.

Barely, she thought.

 

The Fencing Club General Interest meeting started a 6:15 with a group of eleven people.

One woman showed up with ten years of foil experience under her belt, entered the shoddy conference room, and started looking down her nose. She interrupted Marco’s introductory speech with a snide correction, earned herself a hard glare from Jean and a biting taste of Armin’s silver tongue for her trouble. She packed up and left.

One was friendly transfer student from the community college on the other side of the Hudson. He was loud and well-spoken even if his voice was occasionally tainted with an affected irish brogue. He learned that the practices would overlap with the campus LARP club and decided to bow out. He shook everyone’s hand warmly as he left.

There were three women drawn to Jean like to the shadows on the wall, dressed cute instead of practical, who hadn’t expected to sweat off their eyeliner during the basic warm-up. Jean never paid them any extra attention or answered to their every beck and call, and they grew bored and chatty. A residence hall meeting was suddenly remembered. They offered their phone numbers, but weren’t coming back.

Only six people remained. The original members of the club nervously exchanged glances as they moved into a new drill involving partners. It involved timing, distance, and teamwork to balance a practice foil between the pair’s outstretched hands while walking. 

A last newcomer was a man teeming with energy who buzzed around like a skittish school of fish. He was matched up with Armin for the exercise and he blathered on excessively. Talkative was one thing, but there was something truly abrasive about the man that wore at Armin’s patience with the efficiency of a belt sander. His ability to jump from topic to topic was commendable. He was all limbs, towered over Armin, and had a curly mop of red hair. His name was Harry.

He asked, “How do you guys afford all this stuff? You pay for it out of pocket?”

Armin stiffened and remember the long, hard hours he’d put in to afford his own equipment. He replied, “Well, Jean, Marco, and I have our own sets, but the our club room is well stocked with rentals to accommodate newcomers until their can purchase their own. Or not, really, members are welcome to use the spare equipment anytime they wish to participate.”

“Oh, I see.” He considered this for a moment. “How much does a sword go for these days?”

“I can’t say for foil or saber, but an épée costs somewhere from fifty to a hundred dollars. We try to use the word ‘weapon’ instead of ‘sword.’” Armin didn’t really think this guy was already that serious about the sport. Harry couldn’t even walk right yet.

There was less than a minute left in the drill when yet another inexplicable intuitive leap landed the conversation into sensitive waters. 

“I was at the Club Fair, right? And I saw that there was this gay club on campus,” he started. “Like, that’s cool or whatever, but like it has ‘queer’ in its name.”

Armin honestly didn’t understand people like this. They weren’t old friends engaging in real talk where Armin would feel comfortable hearing and responding to such opinions. He entertained himself with the idea that some men needed to wear neckbeards and fedoras like cats wore bells on the collars.

Eren chose that moment to enter the conversation. “Man, what do you care what they call their club?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re not gonna join the club, right?”

“Well, no. I didn’t plan on it.”

“Then, why do you care?” Eren stopped concentrating on the drill and the foil clattered to the floor.

His partner, Jean, said, “And that’s what’s not supposed to happen. Come on guys, let’s concentrate here.”

A tense quiet settled over the room like a weighted net and persisted through Jean’s call for clean up. Harry took that as an opportunity to escape the weight of Eren’s glare and bounded for the exit with his messy ringlets bouncing. The moment he disappeared into the stairwell, a tangible relief swept through the room.

Armin noticed Mikasa, Eren’s friend, watching him with empty disinterest. She was inarguably the most fit and had posture so perfect, Armin’s mild scoliosis ached when he saw her. She spoke without fire or ice, listened well, and learned quickly.

Then there was Eren. He was clumsy, hasty, and rushed words out raw like he couldn’t be bothered to cook up lies, but Armin knew he didn’t climb through the window.

 

The Fencing Club officially registered for the semester with five members.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really struggled with this chapter and the one before it. When I originally drafted the story, these chapters didn't even exist and suddenly everyone's already on the team and other stuff is happening. Shrug.
> 
> There's camera shift to the other side of the story and well, the weirdness comes on a bit strong at the beginning and I don't really want to change it. Hm.


	7. The Teleporting Police

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere on the other side of the Hudson, Christa and Ymir live within walls and act with authority.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very excited to introduce the other side of the story. 
> 
> So here's Ymir and Christa.
> 
> There are some 'main' OC's in this story that make their first appearance in this chapter. SNK characters are definitely the focus though.
> 
> There are descriptions of menstruation at the beginning of the chapter - don't know if it bothers anyone else, but eh.
> 
> Wow, this chapter has just been chilling as a draft since last October, might as well post it. Here goes nothing.

Ymir was a teleporter. The divine power pumped through her veins and she was mighty. Among known others of her kind, she was lauded as an expect for her precision and stamina. She could land on a hawk’s back as it exited its lazy circling above the treeline to dive for prey. She had long outgrown the shakes and chills of exhaustion. 

And what a master she was - squatting over a toilet in a doorless bathroom stall with the lingering aftertaste of dry-swallowed Midol in the back of her throat.

Ymir sighed. Between her and the white, shining seat sat a plastic collection tray. A dark bead of blood dripped into the tray. Ymir was naked from the waist down save from mismatched bathroom slippers. Some sadist up top had decided the building ought to be kept at a steady 50 degrees.

“It’s fucking cold,” Ymir declared to her partner, Christa.

“I know.” Christa was a tiny thing with wispy blond hair knotted into a sloppy bun and owlish blue eyes watching her over a medical mask. Her hands were covered in children’s large pale green latex gloves. She was crouched on the floor holding the tray into place. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Greedy bastards aren’t satisfied with pricking me every month and sucking me dry,” Ymir remarked. She curled her fingers into herself to extract the soft silicone cup collecting her menstrual blood. It slid from her and clattered into the tray. A clot splattered onto the unflinching, dainty fingertips.

Christa, with her clean hand, offered Ymir a new cup dispassionately. “We still have a field trip to take after this.”

The crinkle of the plastic packaging Ymir had to tear through was too loud in the empty bathroom, almost thunderous over the faint hum of the vents busy pouring frigid air down her neck. She inserted the cup with a sigh.

“Ain’t no rest for the wicked,” Ymir joked.

“You’re not wicked, Ymir,” Christa replied, gently.

The tray was slid into a gallon plastic bag marked as hazardous waste. The gloves were slid from Christa’s fingers with the blood trapped inside and added to the bag. She removed her mask, folded it carefully, and tucked it into the pocket of her suit jacket.

Ymir washed her hands and dressed in the room. “Don’t you people think it’s wasteful to keep giving out cups to the women here? Intended for reuse, I’ll have you know.”

“I think it’s wasteful, personally,” Christa answered.

For the evening’s work, the two of them were required to wear gray woolen pant-suits with white button downs. Ymir chose to wear a thin, black tie. She sat directly on the cold tile of the bathroom to pull on quarter length argyle socks before her modest black flats.

The hallway outside of the lavatory was quiet. A woman waited in the hallway. She tapped her foot against the beige carpeting. Her name was Olivia. She wore a floral print blouse, khaki capris, and an abominable air of superiority. 

Christa greeted her with a polite nod. “Good evening.” She passed the gallon bag over to Olivia.

Olivia smiled at them. She had brown lipstick on her teeth. She held up the bag and sloshed around its contents. “We appreciate your donation to the cause.”

Ymir shoved her hands into her pockets and scowled. “Not like I had any plans with it.”

Olivia, unfazed, changed the subject. “It's October 12th, isn't it? Heard you ladies have to make a house call tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Christa responded. 

“That’s unfortunate,” Olivia remarked. Olivia was approaching forty years old - the oldest known teleporter. Her skin was marked with frostburn scars: a bit of lip, an earlobe, and two topmost knuckles from fingers had been claimed.

“We’ve got it under control, Ollie,” Ymir said.

Olivia’s eyes narrowed. “You may want to reserve a level of respect for me, Ymir.”

Christa feigned a glance at her watch. “Oh, would you look at the time. We really need to head out.” She tugged Ymir away by the arm. “Excuse us.”

They exited the building out the back into a small parking lot. Their vehicle was black on black Ford Explorer with inky tinted windows. Christa unlocked the doors and used the step to climb into the driver’s seat. Ymir sat shotgun and reclined her seat as far as it would go with her hands flattened over her stomach. 

“You should at least pretend to like Olivia,” Christa suggested. She started the car and checked her mirrors. 

“Olivia needs to stop being creepy as hell.” 

“We’re in a pretty creepy business.”

Ymir rolled her eyes. “You think?”

They backed out of their parking spot and slowly looped around to the front via the alley between the donation office and the administration building. Both squat buildings were a weary gray with mirrored windows spotted with bird crap. Across the way from the donation office was a large parking lot for the visitors to the security office of external affairs. The lot was empty, as it usually was. 

Christa turned the car onto the main road. Both ends of the road led to gates. Each gate was imbedded into an enormous wall surrounding the complex. 

“Huh,” Christa thought aloud, “South Gate’s closed.”

Ymir sat up in her seat. “End of the world’s come early?”

Christa froze, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. She whispered, “That’s not funny.”

“You considered it,” Ymir muttered. Ymir wasn’t in the habit of bagging on anyone’s religious beliefs, especially Christa’s, but some things were simply too farfetched for her to remember to be respectful. 

The fear in Christa’s eyes gave way to mild annoyance. She drove just up to the gate, rolled down her window at the booth controlling the gate, and discovered it unattended. 

The loud revving of an engine drew their attention. A mud splattered pick-up truck in blood orange was screaming down the road towards them. The truck kicked a cloud of dust up in its wake. One man and one woman were seated in the cab, with the woman at the wheel. The woman slammed on the horn, a grating yelp emitting from the truck.

“Well, that’s not good,” Christa commented dryly. She unbuckled her seatbelt, reached over Ymir to pop open the glove compartment and removed the hard black case of her Glock 26. It was a well-intentioned gift from Christa’s absent father.

The sight of the gun gave Ymir goosebumps. “Not good at all.”

Ymir stepped out of the car and cracked her knuckles. The truck ahead began to slow and it skid on the dirt as the woman foolishly pumped the truck’s antilock brakes. It was close enough for Ymir to recognize their faces. The man was the one who should be at this control booth, William, and the woman was one of their agricultural managers, Ginger.

“Can you see what they’ve got?” Christa shouted. 

With a slow blink of her eyes, Ymir inspected the contents of the approaching car. “Look’s like our boy Willy’s packing. And he’s got two fat bags of who-knows at his feet.”

Ginger was yelling at William. The truck tripped over a last patch of gravel and came to a halt. Ginger looked over her shoulder out the back of the cab and swore loudly. More black Ford Explorers were in swift pursuit behind them from the North Gate, destined to arrive within the minute.

“Why the fuck is the gate closed, Bill!” Ginger screamed.

William was loading his gun with shaking fingers. He paused in his efforts to reply to her.

Ymir took this as a golden opportunity to pay him a little visit. She felt the hairs on her airs branch out to cling to her button down. She appeared outside the truck’s passenger side open window and rested her elbows on the door.

She asked, “Yeah, Bill. Why is the gate closed?”

William dropped his weapon and it clattered between the seat and door. Ginger flattened herself against her door and took in a shuddering gasp, one hand over her surely thundering heart.

William met Ymir’s eyes with a horrified shudder. “Oh, shit.”

Ymir reached inside the truck and opened the door. The gun hit the dirt between Ymir’s feet and she kicked it under the truck.

“Alright, game over, Billy-boy,” Ymir said. She motioned for him to get out of the truck.

The cavalry of SUV’s formed a semicircle around the rear of the truck, blocking them in. Stone faced members of the dreaded Internal Security force filed out of the vehicles and stood in their standard issue gray suits. 

A man in the center of a arc used a megaphone to speak. He had a healthy crop of ghost white hair parted to one side. His face had the battered quality of a lifetime street scrapper: a healed severely broken nose that time had set instead of a doctor, a cheekbone more pronounced than the other, and a mouthful of dental implants staining more than half his smile bleach white. He went by G.

G chuckled into the megaphone and said, “William, William, Willam. What ever are we going to do with you? Trying to filch millions from engineering department. Coercing sweet angel, Ginger over there into cooperating in your plan.” He waved at the truck, presumably at Ginger. “Darlin’ I know you you’ve just been wrapped up in his wickedness. Step out of the truck and we’ll work something out.”

Ginger’s face blanched in outright revulsion as she glared at G through her sideview mirror. She took matters into her own hands. She threw the car into reverse and stomped on the accelerator. Ymir’s hand slipped from the door and she pinched the soft inside of her cheek between her molars. William cowered under his arms and scrunched down and out of sight.

The truck lined up with its rear bumper centered on a crash course with G’s grinning face. He gasped in affected betrayal and cried, “Ginger! I thought we had something special, but now I see you for the stupid slut you always were.”

Ymir curled into a tight ball on the ground and phased directly into the cab of the truck, bouncing off the bench seat of the cab between William and Ginger. She grabbed the shifter and dropped the truck into first gear. The engine roared as its RPM’s skyrocketed. 

Ginger flailed, cursing and spitting and trying unsuccessfully to strike at Ymir with a flying elbow. Ymir took hold of her forearm, smirked, and transported the both of them outside the truck. Ymir had the foresight to immediately stand and Ginger landed flat on her ample ass.

The truck bumped into the SUV beside G going less than ten miles an hour. The security guards took William into custody without hesitation. One guard unzipped a heavy black bag and confirmed it to be filled with pilfered cash. At the place where the truck initially stopped, Christa stood over William’s weapon with her own at-the-ready, trained on Ginger.

Ginger raised her hands in surrender. G himself came for her, twirling a pair of metal handcuffs around his finger, tastelessly whistling the tune to “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” He torqued her arms backwards with unnecessary force, eliciting a squeak of pain, and left her face down in the dirt. He returned to his feet and gave Ymir a tip of an imaginary hat.

“Thanks for the assist, Sunshine,” G said.

Ymir’s skin crawled. She gave him absolutely nothing, making sure to keep her face totally neutral. She jerked her head towards the gate.

G glanced towards the closed South Gate and nodded. He reached out and took Ymir’s tie and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. “Anything for you.”

Ymir teleported to Christa’s side and left the tie hanging from his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I need to be careful with these next few chapters with specifying exactly when they take place, but I think it might be lame to start adding date/time at the beginning. Sigh, clarity is important.


	8. They're Simply . . .Observations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin can't quite figure Eren out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this and the next chapter were originally combined into one, but the point of view shifted in the middle. I think it'll make more sense to break it up. it's hard enough even for me to look at all these separate chapters with all the time skips/character changes.

Over the month and half that they've been roommates, Armin was taking notes of all of Eren’s oddities.

The first time Marco came over to their room, he fell to his knees at the sight of Eren’s laptop computer. 

“Eren, I didn’t know!” Marco exclaimed.

Eren, who was in the process of failing to log on to Blackboard for the fourth time in a row, looked up from his screen with a raised eyebrow. “Didn’t know what?”

“You- you have an MSI GT80 Titan gaming laptop.” Marco inched over on his knees to Eren’s desk and raised his fingers to slide along its smooth black exterior.

“Oh, yeah.” Eren gave up his seat and offered it to Marco. “You want to try it out?”

Marco took the seat immediately and went to set his fingers on the glowing red keys. “Are you sure?”

“Go ahead.”

Marco punched in a random series of letters into the search bar, enjoying the satisfying click-clack of the mechanical keyboard. He whispered, “It’s beautiful.” His hand naturally sought along the desk for a mouse and his palm slide across empty desk.

“Keyboard’s real nice, isn’t it?” Eren was grinning happily. “It makes it super satisfying to type stuff.”

“Where’s your mouse?” Marco asked.

Eren indicated the laptop’s trackpad off to the right of the keyboard. “Right here. Little weird, I know.”

Armin, who watched the scene unfolding quietly from his cross-legged seat on his bed, held his breath.

“What?” Marco breathed. He smiled with disbelief and shook his head. “You do have a _mouse_ mouse, right?”

“No, why?”

“How do you game?”

Eren shrugged. “I don’t.”

The last flicker of hope died in Marco’s eyes. He opened his mouth to protest, but found no words. He enjoyed the feel of the space bar under his thumb and let out a long sigh.

 

Turns out, Eren’s laptop computer was thousands of dollars of wasted potential that he used to hunt and peck his way through 3-5 page responses. Armin judged him so hard. Armin looked up Eren’s computer’s specs, understood nothing, and blanched at the extravagant price tag. An idea passed through Armin that if Marco asked to trade laptop’s Eren would just shrug and agree.

A question that Armin had considered the wording of countless times finally tumbled out of his mouth when he and Eren were alone. “Can I ask you a personal question that you are by no means expected to answer if it makes you uncomfortable?”

Eren flinched, frowning guiltily. “Sure?”

“Did you take out student loans to pay for college?” Armin asked. He figured that this was a safer way of asking if he came from money with the fallback of comparing their interest rates or something if not.

“Oh!” Eren’s shoulders fell in relief. “No, my dad paid for the semester upfront before I could sign on for any. Also, apparently you can’t take out certain kinds of government loans if your parents make too much money?”

Armin struggled to smile. If only Armin had Eren’s problems instead of looking forward to twenty years of debt. “Why would you want to take out loans?”

“I don’t want to be dependent on him anymore,” Eren replied, voice hardened. He stared at the ground and tugged on his fingers to pop his knuckles one by one.

“You could have my loans if you want ‘em,” Armin offered.

“Ha. Nice try.”

Armin snapped his fingers. “Oh, darn.”

 

Armin couldn’t figure out if Eren and Mikasa were fucking or not.

“Hey, I’m going to go hang out with Mikasa tonight, wanna come?” Eren asked.

Eren was packing his backpack with a sketchbook, colored pencils, a deck of cards, and his first year composition 1 textbook. 

“Sorry, I have to finish this before tomorrow,” Armin replied, showing the cover his used paperback. “Thanks anyway.”

“All good, see you later.”

Eren came back the next morning bouncing on the balls of his feet and whistling Yankee Doodle to himself.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” Armin noted.

“I got my score for my first paper - A minus,” Eren announced, smile smug and chest puffed out.

This wasn’t what Armin expected to hear. “Oh, uh, grats man.”

 

Armin encountered Mikasa by chance at the dining hall and sat together for dinner. He was pretty sure that she found him only minutely tolerable. 

She focused mostly on consuming every bit of food on her plate with deadly efficiency. Her jaw moved subtly and swiftly, grinding mouthfuls to mush suitable for digestion. The items she chose to include on her plate looked to be chosen for taste and aesthetic over nutrition. She speared a black olive, scraped it off her fork with her teeth, and washed it down with pink lemonade. 

“You are Eren go way back, don’t you?” Armin asked. He sank a crisp, blackened end of a sweet potato fry into a pile of ketchup and drowned it. 

“Met in kindergarten,” Mikasa answered. She sipped her lemonade and gave a small smile. “Been best friends ever since.”

“That’s amazing. I kind of thought you were dating for a while there, to be honest,” Armin admitted, continuing to twirl his fry in the ketchup until the unburned segment grew mushy and broke off.

Mikasa laughed. It was quiet and beautiful and brought color to her cheeks. “Not in this life.”

“For some reason, I feel like _I_ just got rejected,” Armin said.

Mikasa tilted her head and considered Armin seriously. “Wouldn’t have to worry about that, would I?”

“You got me. Eren tell you?” Armin stuffed his soggy fry into his mouth.

“Nope. Is it a secret?” she asked.

“As long as you don’t tell the grandmother on my mother’s side, you’re fine,” Armin replied. He took a careful shot into the proverbial darkness. “You?”

Her eyes darted away for a moment and she shrugged. Her foot brushed against Armin’s knee as she crossed her legs under the table.

Armin felt like a dick. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s. . .” She took a moment to consider with her eyes searching the ceiling. She rubbed her sweaty palms together. “No one’s even guessed before. That I’m bi. Might not seem like the type.”

“First time for everything?” Armin tried.

“Guess so.”

 

The last bit of strangeness might not be Eren at all, but every time Armin replays the shaky, low-quality vine of the disappearing teenager it looks a little bit more like him. He found the clip on one of their student-run gossip facebook pages with the caption CAMPUS GHOST. The comments have all concluded that the video was only edited, shoddily at that.

He turned the laptop towards Eren’s desk where Eren was apparently taking a much needed study break by resting his face on his notebook.

“Hey, is this you?” Armin asked.

Eren reluctantly raised his head. “Huh?”

“The kid in this vine looks like you.”

“What vine?” He got up to watch the video carefully.

After a loop or two, Armin said, “Doesn’t he?”

“Ha, yeah he really does,” Eren replied. “Maybe he’s one of my ancestors or something.”

Eren laughed, but there was something fake about it.

Armin hummed thoughtfully and turn the screen back towards himself.


	9. Don't Believe Me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just another day of fencing practice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so like I'm visiting my mom and there are five fuzzy kittens that are SO CUTE. how am I suppose to concentrate with these lovable little troublemakers everywhere.
> 
> this chapter happens on the same day as chapter 7. october 12th 2016 was a wednesday. oh what a different world it seemed to be back then.

Eren sat on a low wall enclosing the SUB concourse enjoying the fall breeze nipping at his ears and brushing his hair out of his face. It was a beautiful Wednesday in October and he was trying to capture the image of a mostly barren tree standing alone in the quad in his sketchbook. A pair of students were attempting to run up the tree’s trunk and grab onto a lower branch.

People filtered in and out of the building and one man with a four wheeled suitcase approached Eren. He was tall, blond, and wore a tailored dark suit with a bolo tie. He didn’t speak or make eye contact, simply sat on the wall a yard or so away, pulled a beefy hardcover from his suitcase, and began to read a random page. 

Eren pulled his sketchbook to his chest so that the man wouldn’t see for a moment, but relaxed as the man laughed out loud at his book and turned the page excitedly, eyes dancing along the lines.

His large hands held the book gently with his fingers curled to support the spine and thumbs pinning the pages in place against the wind. There was a scar, thick and white, wrapped around his left wrist and heavy watch around the other. He had a wafer-thin wallet, a flip phone, a set of keys, a small flashlight, and a multi-tool spread across many pockets. His corners of his mouth and eyes were faintly lined and his thick eyebrows were bushy with white sprigs bent on flaunting his age.

He adjusted his position, resting an ankle on the opposite knee and took a moment to check the time. As the wind picked up, his hair remained unmoved, stuck to his head in rigid, straight side-part. He continued to read and snicker at the book. Occasionally, he would skip entire chapters and continue from the next one. 

Eren returned to his drawing and decided to start over a fresh page. One student had made it into the tree and her friend was trying to throw leaves up at her. 

The two of them sat with silence hanging between them like adjacent train-taking commuters until the hour hand inched towards six o’clock. Then, Jean and Marco came from around the corner in their gym clothes with their fencing bags over their shoulders.

Eren waved.

“Yo!” Jean called.

The man beside him startled and returned his book to his bag. As Jean and Marco came into reach, he stood and adjusted his suit jacket.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Jean said. 

“Odd hearing that from you,” the man replied, shaking Jean’s hand.

“Didn’t know you two knew each other already,” Marco said to Eren.

“Oh, well . .” Eren started.

“I’m afraid that was my mistake,” the stranger explained. “I mistook him for Kirschtein from behind and started to read to conceal my unprompted approach.”

“World famous assassin, Erwin Smith, everyone,” Jean said. 

Erwin waved away the praise. “Fame isn’t really good for business.”

Marco nudged Eren. “He’s our coach.”

“You must be Eren.” Erwin eyed him up and down before offering his hand. “I look forward to working with you.”

 

“A tournament?” Eren repeated. “But we just started a month ago!”

“It’s a tradition,” Jean stated.

“We go every year and get crushed,” Armin added helpfully.

“It’s still a few weeks off. We’ll be helping you every step of the way,” Marco reassured.

It was the beginning of practice. Eren and Mikasa wore their borrowed jackets with the brown rings of sweat stains around the neck. Jean, Marco, and Armin looked unfairly professional standing next to them with their white jackets with their last names and USA printed on the back. Armin thought it was kind of pointless for Jean and Marco to have their names on both their jackets and lames, but apparently it was a requirement.

Erwin clapped and brought the room’s attention to himself. “Now, let’s not be pessimists here. We’re going to go out there and have fun. Trust me, there are going to be others just like you who’ve just picked up the sport. There always are.”

Mikasa was unperturbed by the news of the tournament, but she nodded along all the same. She was tying her hair into a short braid to tuck into the collar of her jacket. Her bangs still fell into her face. She was curious what new challenges the tournament would present to her. 

They paired off for drills. Jean with Marco, Mikasa with Erwin, and Eren with Armin. 

“Parries, 4 and 6, okay?” Armin instructed. He met Eren’s eye through their masks and lunged, slow and lazy, towards Eren’s upper arm. Eren slapped Armin’s weapon away with the blade of his own. Armin sighed.

“What? I deflected it,” Eren said.

“It’s not going to work that way in a real bout,” Armin explained.

“Then why practice it this way?”

“To get muscle memory to form so you don’t swat away on instinct.” They’ve already had this discussion, countless times. In fact, perhaps three times a week during every single goddamn practice and Armin was being to grit his teeth. There were only so many ways to suggest the same thing without it becoming a nag. “Remember: Step back, break the wrist, parry and-”

“Riposte, I got it already,” Eren finished for him in a huff.

Armin extended again, this time for the aiming for the shoulder of his unarmed hand. Eren went to beat away the blade again with his bell guard. Armin bit the inside of his cheek and lunged with full force. He landed a rough touch against Eren’s collarbone and Eren yelped, stepping away.

“Shit, that’s gonna bruise,” Eren muttered. He let his épée hang from his body cord and massaged his wound.

“Normally,” Armin started, carefully undoing the bend in his blade with his unarmed hand, “touches are much lighter if they break through a weak parry. If you step back.”

Eren’s eyes narrowed. The air burned between them. He gripped his épée and stood on guard. His posture slouched slightly and he held the weapon out in front of his center. Armin smirked. He extended his arm out and nicked a touch off of Eren’s exposed forearm.

“Guard your arm,” Armin instructed.

Eren stayed quiet. His jacket grew hot. His hair stuck to wire cover of his mask. He adjusted his guard to conceal his arm and brought his shoulders back.

“Looking better,” Armin commended lightly. He extended his arm towards Eren’s bicep again and lunged straight into it. Eren took a half step back, performed a sloppy parry at six, and successfully diverted the direction of Armin’s attack. Eren half formed a smile before Armin lifted up his guard, swooped the tip of his blade under Eren’s arm, and struck him directly on skin of his bare knee.

“What was that?” Eren whined.

Armin recovered. “You didn’t counterattack, so I decided I wanted the point. If you’d’ve pressure me, I would have backed off. Retreat. Parry. Riposte. Do you need me to show you how it’s done?”

“No, I got it this time,” Eren said, low and dangerous. A beam of electricity sparked from the clip holding his body cord into place and his guard with a pop. 

“Okay then, ready? I’m going to attack at four again.” Armin gestured with half-stab towards the left half of Eren’s chest. With Eren’s nod, Armin lunged again, aiming for the scuff he’d already left on the jacket. His attack fell into empty air to the right of where Eren had been and Eren extended the tip of his épée to press against the inside of Armin’s elbow, glancing off a fold in his jacket and successfully clicking the button. Armin blinked and blinked again. 

Eren recovered in his guard stance. His hand shook as it held his pistol grip and he breathed out a long, stuttering breath. The short distance made it easier on his body. And it was less noticeable. A hummingbird could applaud Eren’s dodge.

A saber scratches against a mask. Sneakers drag across the carpet. Flashing lights leak through the windows. Armin tastes the blood inside his mouth and tongues his wound when he’d rather spit on the ground. The chalkboard on the wall behind Eren was poorly cleaned and someone had used their finger to draw a smiley-face into the remaining dust.

“How was that?” Eren asked. There was a purposeful cockiness in his voice that wavered as his voice trembled from the chills. 

“Fine,”Armin said. Clipped, unhappy. “But please step backwards and parry like how the drill is intended for once.”

Eren had no intention on following instructions if Armin was going to start being a dick about it. He closed his eyes. The tip of Armin’s épée pointed stretched out towards the center of his chest. Mikasa was thirty-eight inches to his right with her left hand poised delicately outward. A stack of chairs was a scant two feet to his left. He moved, a perfect shift of four inches to his right, and his eyebrows furrowed as he became aware of more approaching. Armin was not lunging, his was running toward Eren, even though the point of his weapon had slid harmlessly by. Eren extended to touch his tip to Armin’s shoulder as Armin finished his pass when he heard the click of a touch, gentle as a ghost, skim against the back of his thigh.

“What the fuck?” Armin whispered. 

“Armin,” Erwin called. He’d taken off his mask to fully flaunt his great disapproval. “Would you care to explain why you would flesh against a newcomer who has no tools to defend against such an attack?”

Armin blushed. The heat of it carried to the tips of his fingers. He forced himself to look his coach in the eye and said, “He said the drills were useless compared to a real bout and I lost my temper.”

“There is reward for anger in this sport, Armin,” Erwin reprimanded coolly, “Go get some water from the fountain in the hall. Eren, come here and practice with Mikasa.”

Armin ripped off his mask, unhooked his épée from the body cord, and left them both on a stack of chairs before fleeing from the room. The hallway was cooler and noisier. He almost collided with a member of the SUB staff pushing a computer card as he rounded the corner. There was a Student Association office at the end of the hallway with wooden benches on either side of the door. Armin sat on one, undid the velcro of his collar, and zipped open his jacket to the halfway mark. 

He thought about the long hours he’d put in at the campus bookstore to afford his equipment. Every stupid question, every complaint had been worth it to get his own jacket with his name on it and a brand new body cord and a shiny new épée with a pristine bell guard and a faint blue shimmer to the blade. Because he’d finally found a sport he was good at. A sport with as much strategy and mind games as chess where one could get away with being slower or smaller or weaker if you were smart enough, precise enough.

And Armin couldn’t even see Eren move - he was so fast. Armin knew that his flesh attack wasn’t very impressive, but, in theory, Eren should have never seen it coming let alone be able to dodge it in less than a heartbeat.

Long minutes passed. There was an argument going on inside the Student Association office about a budget problem that flared and ended abruptly. A chorus of cheers erupted from another nearby conference room. There was a single lost ant on the floor between Armin’s feet, twitching its antennae and crawling slowly toward the wall.

Armin crushed it under his heel. Tears stung his eyes.

“Goddamnit,” Armin muttered. He sniffled. “Do I just suck?” He buried his face in his hands. His glove was smooth against his face and reeked of sweat. “Is he better than me already?”

“Is who better than you already?”

Armin jumped with a shuddering gasp. “Jesus-fucking-Christ, Eren, you scared me.”

“Sorry.” Eren’s forehead shined with sweat. His hair stuck straight up like he had his palm on a Van Der Graaf generator. He flattened it with his ungloved hand and his hair fizzled and snapped. He appeared frustrated for a moment, in his eyebrows and the turn of his mouth, before he continued, “About before, too. I’m sorry.”

Armin hastily wiped away his tears, but he his embarrassment kept the faucets on. “Fucking Erwin tell you to come out here and apologize like we’re goddamn grade schoolers?”

“No. I mean, he heavily implied it, but I would’ve come out to say it anyway,” Eren replied.

Armin took a deep breath and willed his eyes to stop with their emotional nonsense. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have gotten upset-”

“Don’t apologize for getting upset,” Eren interrupted, his eyes flashing angrily, “You’re allowed to be upset. You’re human.”

Armin let out a single laugh that came out more like a phlegmy cough. “Then, I’m sorry I tried to impale you.”

“Water under the bridge.” Eren offered his gloved hand to shake. “Friends?”

Armin presented his left hand and said, “It’s more polite to shake skin-on-skin.”

A trace of disconcertion flickered across Eren’s face as he traded his right hand for his left tentatively. Armin touched Eren’s hand and the nerves in Armin’s skin freaked in self-preservation and flinched wildly away from his touch before Armin received the message that his skin was hot. There was a pink oval burn forming on the flesh of Armin’s palm that began to sting.

“What the fuck,” Armin yelled. He cradled his hand to his chest.

Eren flinched. This was not going well. “Okay, um, calm down.” 

“What do you mean, ‘calm down’?” Armin was aware that he was still yelling. There was a limit to Armin’s understand of the world and its workings, but Armin had been absolutely certain that being burned by a handshake (a peace offering, no less) was not within the realm of possibility.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Eren said. He was lowering his hands in the take-it-easy gesture. “I can explain.”

Before Armin had a chance to shout more, the door to the Student Association opened and a head of beaded braids appeared in the crack of the door. She said, tone very even, “Could you two either lower your voices or take your discussion elsewhere? We’re in the middle of a meeting.”

Armin glared. Her polite request was just the culmination of all the bullshit of the last half an hour of Armin’s life and he was done. There was no courtesy to be received from him. Eren, however, smiled and apologized. Armin turned and walked away.

“Wait, where are you going?” Eren followed him just a step behind.

“I don’t know,” Armin answered, exasperated, “You wanted to say something, right? Say it.”

Eren saw the woman in the doorway watching them. She shook her head with arms crossed. “Let’s go down to the closet.”

 

It was weird for Armin to be alone in the closet with Eren. It was weird how he closed the door and locked it. There were spare weapons missing from the rack and empty hangers hanging from the shelf. The bait-and-tackle box of body cords was opened and half spilled onto the floor, tangled and shining like a pile of snakes. Armin really should have run ice water over his hand before they came down, but he didn’t. It burned and stung at his side.

“Armin,” Eren started. He was very serious. He bore into Armin through his eyes. “You’re my roommate, my teammate, and my first friend here at school and I think that there’s something you should know.” Eren cleared his throat. “About me.”

Armin could not fathom where this conversation was going. He waited, confused and frustrated.

Eren’s cheeks turned pink and he dropped his eye contact. “And, uh, you’re really observant so maybe you’ve had some suspicions.”

“What?” Armin deadpanned. His anger had cooled and his rational mind had seized control of the reins. He took in the need for privacy, the shame, the impudence toward Armin’s authority, and tried to piece it in with all the other straight-up weirdness.

“Just promise that you won’t tell anyone, okay?” Eren implored.

“That you’re gay?” Armin guessed.

“What?” Eren exclaimed. “Where did you-” He abandoned the question, gestured to himself with both hands, and said clearly, “I’m a teleporter.”

“Haha, like sci-fi?”

Eren sighed. “Really.”

“Prove it,” Armin demanded. Even though a sliver of him already believed. He watched Eren carefully and told him, “Go through the door into the hallway.”

“Uh, I can’t. Someone might see. You know, someone else.” 

“Right.” Armin drew out the word. “Uh, let’s just forget this and go back to practice. The others are probably waiting-”

Eren snapped his fingers. “No, wait. I have an idea.” He stood in the corner of the room and beckoned Armin over. “Here. Back up against this locker here. I’ll go upstairs to the men’s room and be right back. Don’t blink, okay?” 

“Um, okay.” Armin’s inner skeptic raised an its own eyebrow. The locker was cool against his head and his upper back. He put his burn against the surface to try and get some relief and regretted it.

Eren went out the door and closed it behind him. Armin wondered if Eren planned on coming back at all. This was a lie one couldn’t really keep up. Armin was trying not to blink and his eyes were still irritated from being rubbed earlier. Then, he felt hot breath on his face. Eren was less than an inch from him and pumping out heat like a radiator. Eren’s hands had landed on locker above Armin’s head. Static jolted from Eren’s nose to Armin’s brow and Armin blinked in surprise.

“Holy shit,” Armin whispered.

And then Eren was gone. No, wait, he was back at the door. Looking worried. He said, “So, yeah. Teleporter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was actually one of the first things written for this and then as I was writing out the beginning a lot of things changed. example: marco was initially foil and mikasa saber, but I couldn't for the life of me write a reason that she would choose a different weapon from Eren? hmmm


	10. Field Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi learns about Eren, they have a conversation, and go to a community event.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is another flashback, just saying. a note that while the towns mentioned in the story exists, the characters and their backstories have no root in reality.
> 
> as always, thank you for reading.

“Eren has magic powers,” Mikasa said.

Levi hadn’t finished stirring his instant coffee yet. The kettle was singing on the stove. There were two purple finches helping themselves to the feeder hanging outside the kitchen window and a fat, gray squirrel jostling the thick wire it hung from. It was another beautiful summer day. The inside of the house was mild with the fans blowing and Levi had been happy for he was loath to ever pour money into the abyss that was central air conditioning. He wasn’t unhappy just yet, only groggy, in need of a smoke, and still baffled by children at all times.

“Yeah?” Levi hoped he sounded interested as he turned away from his window to face the children sitting at their breakfast bar. He plucked the kettle off the fire and onto a cool burner. “What kind?”

“Super moving powers!” Eren answered helpfully.

Eren had more or less moved into Mikasa and Levi’s home since the first day of summer vacation. He never seemed to want to go home and his father stopped sending cars to pick him up. Levi accepted the fact that he cared for two children. This was his life now. He sipped his coffee thoughtfully and pondered the implications of said powers.

“Are you going to become a superhero?” Levi asked.

Mikasa and Eren’s eyes widened simultaneously at the suggestion and they smiled their holey smiles and giggled with excitement. Isabel and Farlan rose to their feet and yipped. Laughter made them happy. They stayed in their corner of the living room like good dogs, but soon Isabel whined and toed the undrawn line into humans-during-mealtime territory. Levi eyed her critically and both Isabel and Farlan laid down immediately, looking sufficiently guilty even as they couldn’t stop their tails from thumping happily against the floor.

“I’ll totally be a superhero!” Eren proclaimed. His voice was big. Even inside, Levi felt he could hear it ricochet off the mountains on the other side of Cherry Valley.

“You have to win the race first, Eren,” Mikasa reminded him. She was pointing to a copy of the local newspaper. Mikasa could read a bit, but not well enough to take on a newspaper without assistance. 

Eren didn’t seem to be able to read at all yet. He squinted at the picture, undeterred. He slapped his hand against the countertop. “Yup! The Field Day race, that’s right. I gotta win the race, then I gotta be a superhero.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to win with your ‘super moving powers,’” Levi encouraged blandly. He set down his coffee and shuffled in his slippers over to the refrigerator. “But first, breakfast. What fruit do you want today?”

“I don’t know,” Mikasa answered.

“Watermelon!” Eren chipped.

“Sorry,” Levi said, holding back a sigh, “I should have been more specific. What fruit do you want in your pablum?”

“Wa-ter-me-lon,” Eren repeated.

“Same,” Mikasa agreed.

Levi understood somewhere in his heart that children, too, knew how to fuck with people, but he wasn’t entirely sure if this was one of those moments. He pulled out a leftover half of watermelon from the night before and set it down on the cutting board. He glanced over to the children as he reached for a nice big knife to dice it up with and surely enough, they were snickering behind their hands. Whatever. It was their breakfast.

“When is this race you’re talking about, by the way?” Levi asked. He dumped cubed chunks of watermelon into a large plastic bowl. He speared one with the end of his knife and popped it into his mouth.

Eren made a long thoughtful sound.

“Tomorrow,” Mikasa supplied.

Levi almost sprayed bits of watermelon across his clean counter. He liked to have time to mentally prepare himself for social interaction. The whole town was probably going to be there - all seven hundred of its residents. Levi considered for a moment. He set the bowl of watermelon out for the kids to devour like the bottomless demons from hell they were. Fingers flew into the bowl with no abandon and juice dribbled down chins onto the breakfast bar. Mikasa encountered the only brown seed in the watermelon, fished it from her mouth, and wiped it off on her pants. Levi felt his blood pressure rise.

“Eren, will your family go too?”

“Nah, my dad’s got work,” Eren explained, offering Levi a full view of pink mush on his tongue.

Levi frowned at that. Eren never mentioned a mother. When Levi called, a member of their housestaff or the father answered the phone. He supposed, sadly, that he and Mikasa certainly did have a lot in common. His heart ached with the pain of having the memories of Mikasa’s parents, with no way to pass them to her, when he felt he didn’t deserve them.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t wanna, Levi,” Eren said. He’d stopped eating and actually swallowed before speaking. There was a freakish empathy in his eyes as they welled up with tears. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand and then said, “Don’t be sad.”

“I’m not sad, Eren. I’m happy to be able to take you two tomorrow, see?” Levi smiled big to show his teeth and pointed to them. He slid the box of tissues out on the breakfast bar over to Eren. Eren ripped out a fistful of them and blew his nose. Mikasa awkwardly hushed him and patted his back, continuing to munch on watermelon. 

Levi didn’t have to wonder where she got that from.

 

With breakfast finished and cleaned up, Eren and Mikasa went outside to practice for the race in the yard. Levi watched them from the deck, leaning against the rail with a cigarette. There was a great stretch of green grass for the kids to frolic on. Property was cheap up here and Levi had purchased twelve acres of field and woods for Mikasa to explore and was eyeing up the neighbor’s plot. The old trailer sat becoming reclaimed by nature and the foreclosure notices floated off of the rotted door onto Levi’s property. If he could annex that, they would have twenty-six acres all to themselves (and Eren, apparently) here at the top of the mountain.

Mikasa was safe here.

The list of convenient absences was ongoing: no traffic, neighbors, floods, hurricanes, poison ivy, Lyme’s disease, noise, or light pollution. The air was clean and smelled of rain running off the mountain. The grass was plush like carpeting. The earth beneath it was thick clay that turned orange when wet and could suck your boots clean off.

The kids were dragging fallen branches into the yard to designate the end point of their sprinting path. The starting point was a pair of tall white birch trees, their leaves splendid and emerald at the ends of bone white and ash stained, peeling bark. A pair of nesting robins flittered back and forth between trees, taking turns feeding their young and fetching more insects. Levi was fond of his robins, who had also visited his trees the previous nesting season, and wished he could offer them seed, but they were uninterested.

Levi put out his cigarette in his portable ashtray and quelled the urge to strike up another.

The first practice race was starting.

Mikasa counted it down.

And Eren simply vanished.

Levi had great pride in his eyesight. He was old and short, but he was not near-sighted or far-sighted or any of that confusing nonsense. He definitely saw Mikasa laughing and running by herself across the yard. He followed ahead to her destination and there Eren was, waving and hollering for her to hurry up. 

The kid that travels fifteen miles by dawn every morning to get to Levi’s house. The kid that Mikasa, a very serious child, claims to have magic powers.

Maybe Levi believed in magic after all. He shambled down the deck stairs into the yard.

“Didja see?” Eren asked. He was bouncing from foot to foot with his hands rubbing his upper arms. His teeth chattered loudly.

It was 85 degrees out.

“I missed it,” Levi said. “I’ll see it for sure next time.”

Mikasa was glaring at Levi. There was a shadow of accusation over her eyes, just under her sparse, barely-there eyebrows. Her cheeks were beginning to burn in the sun. There were cute fists stuck on her hips and she huffed.

“I’ll watch just one more, then I’ll go inside,” Levi promised. This mollified Mikasa, whose expression returned to its disinterested neutral.

He didn’t have to watch another race. Eren used his magic powers to return to the starting line under the birches. The robins tweeted suspiciously from the lower branches in attempts to scare the abomination away from their nest. The birches themselves swayed and ruffled as a cool, sudden wind crept up and gusted through their branches. 

“Jesus,” Levi muttered.

Blue skies persisted, undeterred by the magic of the mortals, busy dragging fat cumulus clouds across the horizon. 

“You didn’t believe me,” Mikasa accused.

Levi gave credit when it was due. “You’re right. I didn’t, but I do now.”

 

There needed to be a talk. Levi waited until after dinner. Eren was wrapped in an old, lumpy comforter and drank hot tea from inside his cocoon. Mikasa sat next to him on their couch. The couch was a very flowery patterned beige couch that came with decorative pillows and a matching quilt. Isabel and Farlan sat on the floor under their feet. Farlan absently licked the sweat from Mikasa’s calf as she scratched behind his ears.

Levi sat upright in a grand green armchair designed for the elderly. It had controls to both recline and assist someone in standing. Levi had no use of either of these functions now. Only to sit, and hopefully process his newly acquired information as lucidly as possible. There was a television in the corner, sitting off, with the VCR above it blinking with the time the tape inside had been paused. Mikasa and Eren had been watching Jurassic Park, again. Eren nestled deeper into the covers.

Mikasa twiddled her thumbs clumsily. She announced, “We’re in trouble.”

“No, no, no. You’re not in trouble,” Levi said.

“You turned off the TV,” Mikasa pointed out, “and you gave Eren tea instead of cocoa.” Eren nodded and sadly looked down into his mug.

“I told you, we’re out of cocoa,” Levi repeated, exasperated.

There was no easy way to say it. Levi wasn’t a conspiracy theorist. He didn’t believe that the moon landing was staged or in Area 51 or aliens built the pyramids or anything. He certainly didn’t believe that the government was creating superhuman weapons to defeat the communists. Shit, the wall had fallen twelve years ago. They’d survived Y2K or whatever the fuck that was supposed to be. But somewhere in his heart, there was a dark, writhing fear that whatever magic or power or whatever it was that Eren had, best be kept a secret. Levi couldn’t bear the thought of the government taking him away or the crazy backwards-ass country folk restarting the Salem witch trials.

“There’s no trouble,” Levi reassured. “But you have to make me a promise, okay?”

“A promise?” Eren asked.

“That’s right. A promise.” Levi cursed his slow thinking as he considered his words. “You have to promise that you won’t use, or talk about, your super moving powers.”

“Why!” Mikasa complained. She furrowed those brows of her and pouted with her whole pink lower lip hanging out over her chin.

Eren continued to stare into his tea and said nothing. He stroked the rim of the mug and then sneezed violently. Hot water sloshed onto his lap. Isabel leapt to her feet, danced nervously on her paws before settling down. She sat and laid her head in Eren’s lap with her big puppy eyes and ears laid back.

Mikasa dropped her pleading look, which never gained her any ground with Levi anyway, and said, “Bless you,” to Eren.

Levi sighed. “Look, I’m just saying that people won’t like it if Eren uses his super moving powers. They won’t think it’s fair. Other kids will think it’s cheating because Eren has powers and they don’t.”

“I don’t think it’s cheating,” Mikasa argued.

Someone’s going to be make an excellent lawyer some day, Levi thought.

Eren pulled the blanket off his head. His cheeks were still apple-red from the chill in his bones. “I understand, I guess.”

“Eren,” Mikasa breathed. She turned her head in disbelief. Betrayed by her own friend and cornering her two vs one against Levi, of all people.

“I won’t use ‘em,” Eren said, “So can we watch Jurassic Park now?”

Levi turned the TV back on, figuring that was as close to a promise as it was going to get.

 

Field Day was on the soccer field of the school. That’s right, the school. The one gray converted sixties bomb shelter with tiny windows that held classes for grades K-12. The school also had no soccer team, but the school board could not have possibly afforded a million-dollar astroturf football field. The parking lot was experiencing the most traffic it probably ever had, which was to say, it was about halfway full and one actually had to walk more than a minute to reach the school from their spot.

Adults toted around folding chairs and brightly colored coolers. Most coolers contained bottles of water, or gatorade, or capri-sun, or sunny-d or whatever it was that their kids would be drinking during the long hot day in the sun. Some contained six-packs of beer for parents to conspicuously pour into red cups and quickly hide away the bottles.

There were a variety of mothers at the event. 

Hoverers, who were armed with sunscreen and hair ties that fixed up their child’s appearance and fretted over their well-being at all times. These were also the mothers who showed up with fully stocked first aid kits beyond simple bacitracin and band aids like they would be prepared to splint a kid’s leg and tie a tourniquet it that was what it came down to. 

Gossipers, who gathered in gaggles and laughed in shrill unison. There must be something truly agonizingly monotonous about their lives to spent their time ragging on other people’s kids. 

Coaches, who were having their kids stretch and eat untasty power bars and wore whistles around their necks. These people must regret something in their own lives that they wish experience vicariously through their offspring, but spend most of that time going red in the face shouting at the volunteer teenage referees that aren’t getting paid enough to deal with their overzealous bullshit.

Of course, these weren’t exactly discrete categories and some overlapping did occur within some of the mothers. 

Like Levi, who was neither a father nor a mother to either of the children he brought to Field Day, but he was wearing a backpack filled with Hoverer supplies, was already being whispered about by the Gossipers, and was having Eren and Mikasa sized up by the other first grade Coaches. He carried a cooler and a large folded blanket from Korea that he bought while he was in the service. A thermos of cocoa hung from his wrist.

Eren and Mikasa lingered behind Levi as he paved the way, talking excitedly amongst themselves. Each child had been given a leash. Mikasa had Farlan and Eren had Isabel. They walked dutifully at their respective child’s side. The leashes were for the mental comfort of others, really.

“I’m still gonna win,” Eren boasted. He wore a hooded sweatshirt in New York Yankees colors from Cooperstown, a pair of bright orange basketball shorts, and his lucky light-up velcro sneakers.

“Uh huh,” Mikasa agreed. Levi had her in two coats of SPF 50 Banana Boat Sport for her body and Neutrogena Faces SPF 65 on her already pink cheeks. He’d pulled her hair into tight micro pigtails held up with neon green scrunchies, but some of her stubbornly fine hairs fell onto her neck and forehead. She’d picked out her oversized salmon Howe’s Cavern shirt, yellow jean shorts, and mismatched socks herself.

Levi claimed a decent section of grass by unfurling the massive blanket. The huge lion’s head woven into the blanket’s design roared ferociously. Mikasa let herself fall onto its face with a small ‘oof’ when the ground was not nearly as forgiving as the bed the blanket normally laid over. Eren reached down and touched his toes, wiggling his fingers beneath the toes of his sneakers, and hummed the tune to “Down by the Bay.” Levi set down his gear and instructed the kids and dogs to stay on the lion until his return.

Levi made his way to the far perimeter of the field, away from any children or claimed plots of grass, and lit a cigarette. He couldn’t smoke in his truck with the kids in it and he was simply itching for the nicotine. Only one drag in and some reflective vest wearing wannabe official stomped over to Levi was reprimand on his lips.

“Sir, there are no drugs allowed on school property,” he said. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, probably a college student. One of those ones who still thought that going to college made you better than other people as opposed to just as stupid, lost, and confused as the rest of the populace.

Levi watched the end of his cigarette curl with ash.

The official frowned at the lack of respect for his authority. He warned, “If you continue to disobey the rules, it will result in, at worst, a fine of one thousand dollars per violation, or, at its most lenient, the disqualification of your accompanying children from the activities.”

“You gonna go around and point out every red cup of booze on this field too?” Levi asked. He snubbed out the cigarette in his ashtray.

“That’s not your concern,” the official answered. He put out his hand. “Now please hang over the cigarettes so that they can be properly disposed of.”

“What is this bullshit?” Levi demanded. “I put them away, what more do you want from me? This is not how the law works. You mean to tell me that not a single teacher or staff member at this fucking school carries a pack of cigarettes around during the day? What a joke.”

The official simply narrowed his eyes.

“Fine, fuck it, I quit,” Levi declared. He threw the pack on the ground. The lighter and ashtray, too. Then, he spit on them. “They’re all yours.”

He’d made it about three paces away when he noted another man approaching. The man wore his graying hair in a two-weeks outgrown high and tight, a NY Jets jersey, khaki shorts, and camouflage printed Teva’s. He stood slouching as he looked down at Levi with his half a foot height advantage.

“You got a problem with my son?” he asked, threat reverberating ominously. His forehead was lined heavily from years of trying to act tough. His forearms were lined with the scars from when he had to prove it.

Levi heard the voice and spared the man a look in the eye, then stopped.

“Bossard?” Levi asked. “Auruo Bossard?”

“No fucking way,” Auruo uttered, “That you Ackerman? Jesus, man, you shrunk.” There was no polite time to remind Auruo that Levi wasn’t a touchy-feely person before Auruo gave him a quick hug, more of a slap of his arms against Levi’s back than anything. Auruo backed away and whistled through his teeth.

Levi found a smile. “It’s been what, seven years?”

“Just about, damn.” Auruo shook his head. “Thomas was just about to start sixth grade when we moved out to Colorado. You remember that barbeque? When Tommy pissed off the neighbor girl and she kicked him in the shin? That was some funny shit.”

The grown Thomas approached his father and crossed his arms. 

“What, what?” Auruo asked him. “It’s a funny story.”

“This guy gave me something he spit on,” Thomas stated.

Auruo laughed. “You’re lucky he didn’t blow his nose on it. You shouldn't have bothered him. I told you to pipe down the ‘holier-than-thou’ shit out in these parts.”

Thomas was unimpressed.

Auruo reached over and ruffled Thomas’ hair. “Get over it, will ya? This guy’s family.”

Levi hoped the fact that he was greatly taken aback didn’t show on his face. Thomas went off to harass other attendees of Field Day with a curt wave. Auruo joined Levi on his walk back to Levi’s spot and chatted. Unfortunately, as one gets older, there tends to be more bad news than good during reunions.

“Nah, she left me two years ago,” Auruo said, looking at his bare finger, “I thought the imprint of the ring was never gonna fade.”

Levi cursed. “Sorry.”

“We made it until Thomas graduated from high school. At the end, that’s all that mattered.” Auruo changed the subject. “You still with that girl? With the glasses.” Auruo tapped his chin. “Zoey?”

Levi shuddered. “Oh God no. Didn’t last til the end of the month. Not a bad person, we just didn’t mesh. Toothpaste and orange juice, man.”

“Happens. How about your brother? He was engaged, wasn’t he?” Auruo asked.

“They got married. It was a small family affair, but beautiful, had it in our parents’ back yard,” Levi reminisced. He inhaled sharply to dispel the mist forming over his eyes. “He cried when he read his vows and so did she. They were so happy.”

Auruo jabbed him in the shoulder. “I bet you did too. Getting choked up just thinking about it, you are.”

“I might have actually,” Levi admitted, “but that’s not it. They. . . passed away.”

Auruo stopped, horrified. He whispered, “When? How?”

“Drugs,” Levi replied quietly, “Last summer.”

“Jesus.” Auruo was at a loss for words. “I am so sorry.” A chill ran down his spine. “Any kids?”

They arrived at the blanket, with Eren and Mikasa engaged in a thumb-war and the dogs onlooking with tilted heads and quirked ears. Someone had already spilled red gatorade onto the blanket. Mikasa was down to one pigtail, the other green scrunchie retired to her wrist. At Levi’s approach, the battle was conceded and their hands untangled. A lump formed in Levi’s throat.

“Auruo, this is my niece, Mikasa,” Levi said.

Auruo dropped down to a knee and reached out his hand for Mikasa to shake. “Well hello there pretty lady. I’m Auruo.”

“Nice to meet you, Auruo,” Mikasa replied politely. Her hand so tiny and delicate in his and she still gave a firm handshake.

Eren stuck out his hand next. It was pink with residual red gatorade. “And I’m Eren.”

“And I take it you’re the boyfriend,” Auruo teased, humoring Eren with a handshake and coming away sticky-fingered.

Eren shook his head and laughed. “No way. She’s gonna be my sidekick. After we win the race today, right?”

Mikasa nodded eagerly.

Levi sat down between his two dogs and gently patted their backs. Farlan craned his neck to lick Levi’s face. 

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full here,” Auruo observed. He padded down his pockets until he discovered his wallet. It was a thick tri-fold black leather monstrosity filled with more plastic than paper. He picked out a pair of cards with his fingertips after much effort and shoved them towards Levi. “You need anything in the world, you call me, alright?” 

One was a business card with Auruo’s address and phone number, presumably a work number, with a Westchester area code. He was a Lieutenant in the Narcotics department. The other was a blue plastic card with Auruo’s badge number, his rank, and the words ‘Patrolman’s Benevolent Association” written across it.

“Thank you,” Levi replied.

Auruo excused himself and barked for Thomas from across the field. Kids were being lined up by age for the contests. Some were joined by their Hoverer, despite the best efforts of the volunteers running the events. Others were observed by their Coaches, who stood as close to the white sideline as they were allowed. The sun fled behind a thin stretch of cloud cover held taut over the sky. The light leaked through like the shine on an iris. Chatter buzzed through the air, distorted by distance and overlapping echoes.

Isabel yawned loudly and her teeth clicked as she closed her mouth before she resumed her panting. Levi reached over to his backpack, took out an old battered tupperware container and a gallon jug of water. He set the dish on the grass and poured out drink for his pups. 

Eren tugged on Mikasa’s shirtsleeve. “C’mon.”

Mikasa looked to Levi, bit her lip, swallowed her six-year-old pride, and handed over her scrunchie. Levi dutifully restored her other pigtail and wished them luck.

 

Levi, Eren, Mikasa, Isabel, and Farlan posed together for a photo to go into the local newspaper. Mikasa had broken the town record for children under seven. She’d lost both her pigtails, but gained a plastic trophy the size of her torso. Eren had hugged Mikasa at the finish line, prodded her directly in the chest with his chubby finger, and told her that she was the hero now.


End file.
